My thoughts today are with two friends who are in the hospital; one of them I won't name out of respect for their family's privacy, but the other (who is quite open about it on his social media) is the Hometown Historian. Jon's always been a good friend to this blog, so please keep a good thought for him as he undergoes a difficult but necessary procedure.
I'm having trouble getting this week's blog post started through no particular fault of my own. No, it's the children who are to blame - my two younger cats, Kashi and Sashi, are living up to the nickname my friend Rachel gave them. She calls them "the chaos babies" and they keep trying to sit on my laptop keyboard. This is making it difficult to write, because I keep having to fix the 'additions' they're making to the post. But the history must go on, I suppose.
For this second quest of 2026, I'm staying relatively close to home and looking at the background of one of the Lehigh Valley's resident industries. I already touched on it quite some time ago, when the blog was still pretty new and I still lived within walking distance of the First Cement marker. The blog and I have since moved elsewhere, but then again, so has the cement industry.
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| This marker is found at 2811 Bath Pike in Upper Nazareth Township. Identical markers are located at Tilghman Street and Mill Road, in Upper Macungie Township, and at 5288 South Delaware Drive, in Lower Mount Bethel Township. |
It's actually Joseph Aspdin's son William who is recognized as the inventor of "modern" Portland cement, since he took his dad's work and improved on it, apparently at least somewhat by accident. Saylor, meanwhile, is remembered as "the Father of the American Portland Cement Industry." His was the first patent for Portland cement issued in the United States, in 1871, and after some trial and error he was able to reproduce the Aspdin 'recipe' for the material. The Coplay Cement Company Kilns produced the country's first Portland cement for sale in 1875, and by the 1880s, it was being manufactured in various places throughout the United States. Though still made in England, Germany, and other places overseas, American-made Portland cement was of such high quality that by the 20th century, importing it from elsewhere had become relatively unusual.
In some respects, Portland cement isn't really very different from other kinds of cement. The composition isn't necessarily special - it's made by smashing a material known as "clinker," which is a hydraulic substance made up of calcium silicates, aluminum, and iron. There's also some magnesium oxide in there, although only a little. (All the descriptions I've found are heavy on scientific jargon, which I'm trying to translate as best I can; I'm not fluent in science words, though, so I just hope I'm getting it right.) The clinker also contains water, calcium sulfate, limestone, and what is only described as "processing additions." Anyway, this is pulverized, and then heated; it's the heating which makes Portland cement unique. The temperatures for cooking Portland cement are extremely high, which triggers a particular chemical reaction in its components, and it's this chemical reaction that makes the cement so durable, strong, and ideal for many different construction projects.
So then what do they do with it? Well, Portland cement can be found as an ingredient in many mortars, grouts, and plasters. However, it's mostly used to make concrete, mostly. Portland cement is mixed with water, cast into a desired shape, and then allowed to harden over several weeks. The result is an excellent load-bearing material which can be used to make furniture (like concrete benches in parks), roads, support beams, and panels. Interestingly, concrete made from Portland cement can provide an effective barrier against radon, although how effective it is depends on certain factors in the manufacture, and so it's very useful for constructing buildings where people need to be protected from radon exposure.
Because its components are widely available and very inexpensive, Portland cement is a low-cost building material despite its excellent quality. More than four billion tons of it are manufactured every year, in various places throughout the United States and around the world. But like so many other things, its American birthplace was right here in Pennsylvania, and even today we are the sixth-largest cement-producing state in the country.
"The Father of the American Portland Cement Industry" may not have lived long enough to see his dreams fully realized, but the instincts which had him plant the seeds of those dreams in the Lehigh Valley were absolutely right.
Except where indicated, all writing and photography on this blog is the intellectual property of Laura Klotz. This blog is written with permission of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. I am not employed by the PHMC. All rights reserved.
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