History
Using straw, sticks, and branches to reinforce adobe bricks and mud dwellings has happened since the earliest part of human history, and in the 16th and 17th centuries, French engineers used sticks to reinforce dikes. Reinforcing levees with branches has been done in China for at least a thousand years, and other reinforcements have been universally used to prevent soil erosion. Modern use of soil reinforcing for retaining wall construction was pioneered by French architect and engineer Henri Vidal in the 1960s. The first MSE wall in the United States was built in 1971 on State Route 39 near Los Angeles. It is estimated that since 1997, approximately 23,000 MSE walls have been constructed in the world. The highest MSE wall built in the United States is 30 m (98 ft) high.
Read more about this topic: Mechanically Stabilized Earth
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Anyone who is practically acquainted with scientific work is aware that those who refuse to go beyond fact rarely get as far as fact; and anyone who has studied the history of science knows that almost every great step therein has been made by the “anticipation of Nature.””
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“Regarding History as the slaughter-bench at which the happiness of peoples, the wisdom of States, and the virtue of individuals have been victimized—the question involuntarily arises—to what principle, to what final aim these enormous sacrifices have been offered.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“History, as an entirety, could only exist in the eyes of an observer outside it and outside the world. History only exists, in the final analysis, for God.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)