History
As proposed by Richardson, treatment of wood has been practised for almost as long as the use of wood itself. There are records of wood preservation reaching back to ancient Greece during Alexander the Great's rule, where bridge wood was soaked in olive oil. The Romans protected their ship hulls by brushing the wood with tar. During the Industrial Revolution wood preservation became a cornerstone of the wood processing industry. Inventors and scientists such as Bethell, Boucherie, Burnett and Kyan made historic developments in wood preservation, with the preservative solutions and processes. Commercial pressure treatment began in the latter half of the 19th century with the protection of railroad crossties using creosote. Treated wood was used primarily for industrial, agricultural, and utility applications, where it is still used, until its use grew considerably (at least in the United States) in the 1970s as homeowners began building decks and backyard projects. Innovation in treated timber products continues to this day, with consumers becoming more interested in less toxic materials.
Read more about this topic: Wood Preservation
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“Anything in history or nature that can be described as changing steadily can be seen as heading toward catastrophe.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“No matter how vital experience might be while you lived it, no sooner was it ended and dead than it became as lifeless as the piles of dry dust in a school history book.”
—Ellen Glasgow (1874–1945)
“The true theater of history is therefore the temperate zone.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)