tarmac
road surface
TRANSLATION
tarmac = der Teermakadam tarmac = die Rollbahn tarmac (verb) = ein Flugzeug auf eine Rollbahn parken tarmac (verb) = eine Straße mit Makadam teeren --- GOOGLE INDEX tarmac: approximately 16,700,000 Google hits
STATISTICS
IN THE PRESS
China hands over 101 km TARMAC road to Malawi
(People's Daily Online)
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Passengers aboard a WestJet plane that slid off the TARMAC and had its wheels stuck in the snow at the Kelowna airport were left waiting for another way to get to Alberta.
(The Vancouver Sun)
(People's Daily Online)
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Passengers aboard a WestJet plane that slid off the TARMAC and had its wheels stuck in the snow at the Kelowna airport were left waiting for another way to get to Alberta.
(The Vancouver Sun)
Did you
know?
tarmac
noun
- black material used for building roads, etc., which consists of tar mixed with small stones
- an area covered in tarmac, especially the area in an airport where aircraft land and take off
(Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary)
tarmac
verb
- to sit on a taxiway (an aircraft) or cause an aircraft to sit on a taxiway
- to cover a road surface with macadam
(American Heritage Dictionary)
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Etymology: Tarmac is short for tarmacadam, a compound noun created from "tar" and "macadam" (pavement made of layers of compacted broken stone named after Scottish engineer John McAdam).
Some history books argue that John McAdam is the man behind tar macadam, or tarmac as it is usually called. Although he was responsible for inventing road surfaces with crushed stones, he never found a way to make the stones stick together. Not a big problem in the days of horse drawn vehicles. But for cars, these roads often led to punctured tyres because the surface was very jagged.
Along came Edgar Hooley, who was working as a surveyor for Nottinghamshire County in 1901 when he noticed a smooth stretch of road close to an ironworks. He asked locals what had happened and was told a barrel of tar had fallen from a cart and burst open. Someone had poured waste slag (iron ore residue) from the nearby furnaces to cover up the mess. He noticed this unintentional resurfacing had solidified the road - there was no rutting and no dust.
By 1902 Hooley had patented the process of heating tar, adding slag to the mix and then breaking stones within the mixture to form a smooth road surface. Having perfected the operation, Hooley began transforming road surfaces and Nottingham's Radcliffe Road became the first tarmac road in the world.
Hooley formed Tar Macadam Syndicate Ltd in 1903, but eventually sold it to the owner of a steelworks which produced large quantities of slag used in tarmac production. The company was re-launched as Tarmac Ltd in 1905. It became an immediate success and remains a major company to this day.
(adapted from the BBC)
---
SMUGGLE OWAD into today's conversation
"It's really annoying when your plane sits on the tarmac for an hour!"
noun
- black material used for building roads, etc., which consists of tar mixed with small stones
- an area covered in tarmac, especially the area in an airport where aircraft land and take off
(Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary)
tarmac
verb
- to sit on a taxiway (an aircraft) or cause an aircraft to sit on a taxiway
- to cover a road surface with macadam
(American Heritage Dictionary)
---
Etymology: Tarmac is short for tarmacadam, a compound noun created from "tar" and "macadam" (pavement made of layers of compacted broken stone named after Scottish engineer John McAdam).
Some history books argue that John McAdam is the man behind tar macadam, or tarmac as it is usually called. Although he was responsible for inventing road surfaces with crushed stones, he never found a way to make the stones stick together. Not a big problem in the days of horse drawn vehicles. But for cars, these roads often led to punctured tyres because the surface was very jagged.
Along came Edgar Hooley, who was working as a surveyor for Nottinghamshire County in 1901 when he noticed a smooth stretch of road close to an ironworks. He asked locals what had happened and was told a barrel of tar had fallen from a cart and burst open. Someone had poured waste slag (iron ore residue) from the nearby furnaces to cover up the mess. He noticed this unintentional resurfacing had solidified the road - there was no rutting and no dust.
By 1902 Hooley had patented the process of heating tar, adding slag to the mix and then breaking stones within the mixture to form a smooth road surface. Having perfected the operation, Hooley began transforming road surfaces and Nottingham's Radcliffe Road became the first tarmac road in the world.
Hooley formed Tar Macadam Syndicate Ltd in 1903, but eventually sold it to the owner of a steelworks which produced large quantities of slag used in tarmac production. The company was re-launched as Tarmac Ltd in 1905. It became an immediate success and remains a major company to this day.
(adapted from the BBC)
---
SMUGGLE OWAD into today's conversation
"It's really annoying when your plane sits on the tarmac for an hour!"
