William Boutland Wilkinson

William Boutland Wilkinson (* 1819 ; † 1902 ) was a British civil engineer.

Wilkinson was a building contractor from Newcastle-upon-Tyne . He is also known as the master plasterer with a factory for prefabricated stones. In 1854 he applied for a patent on reinforced concrete in fire-resistant ceilings and is thus considered one of its inventors.

Joseph-Louis Lambot (1814–1887) applied for a patent in France on ships and other structures exposed to the water with reinforced concrete, the Frenchman François Coignet also applied for a patent on reinforced stamped concrete in 1855 and wrote the first book on reinforced concrete and the lawyer Thaddeus Hyatt also made attempts from 1850 and published a report on it in 1877. The patents of Joseph Monier from 1867 are better known. The iron rods (at Wilkinson wire ropes) were used to absorb the tensile forces, as the concrete without them was compressive but not very tensile. For Wilkinson, the question of cheaper building was in the foreground. Wilkinson also built a number of reinforced concrete buildings in Newcastle around 1860, one of which (dating from around 1865) lasted until 1954, with the reinforcement still well preserved. His concrete construction company existed in Newcastle and London until the beginning of the 20th century.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Werner Seim Reinforcement and Reinforcement of Reinforced Concrete Structures , Ernst and Son 2007, p. 9
2. ↑ On Wilkinson ( Memento from December 4, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
3. ^ W. Fisher Cassie, Structural Engineer, Apr 1955, pp. 134-137
4. ^ Peter Collins Concrete: The Vision of a new architecture , McGill Queens University Press, 2nd edition 2004, p. 38