Dated Death With Dr. Thorndyke Part 3

Road of Setts


Road of cobblestones


Continuing with The Mystery of 31 New Inn (available for free as a Kindle book):

"The vibrations of the carriage, with its hard springs and iron-tired wheels, registered accurately and plainly the character of the roadway. The harsh rattle of granite setts, the soft bumpiness of macadam, the smooth rumble of wood pavement, the jarring and swerving of crossed tram-lines, all were easily recognizable and together sketched the general features of the neighborhood through which I was passing."

granite setts - A sett, usually the plural setts and in some places called a Belgian block,[1], often incorrectly called "cobblestone", is a broadly rectangular quarried stone used originally for paving roads,[2] today a decorative stone paving used in landscape architecture.[3][4] A sett is distinct from a cobblestone by being quarried or shaped to a regular form, whereas a cobblestone is generally naturally occurring

macadam - Macadam is a type of road construction pioneered by the Scotsman John Loudon McAdam in around 1820. The method simplified what had been considered state-of-the-art at that point. Single sized aggregate layers of stone with a coating of binder as a cementing agent are mixed in an open-structured macadam.


Macadam road

wood pavement - Brick, cobblestone, sett, and wood plank pavements were once common in urban areas throughout the world, but fell out of fashion in most countries, due to the high cost of labor required to lay and maintain them, and are typically only kept for historical or aesthetic reasons

tram lines - Tramways with tramcars (British English) or street railways with streetcars (American English) were common throughout the industrialised world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries but they had disappeared from most British, Canadian, French and U.S. cities by the mid-20th century



iron-tired wheels - [edit] Iron tires
The earliest tires were bands of iron (later steel), placed on wooden wheels, used on carts and wagons. The tire would be heated in a forge fire, placed over the wheel and quenched, causing the metal to contract and fit tightly on the wheel. A skilled worker, known as a wheelwright, carried out this work. The outer ring served to "tie" the wheel segments together for use, providing also a wear-resistant surface to the perimeter of the wheel. The word "tire" thus emerged as a variant spelling to refer to the metal bands used to tie wheels.

[edit] Rubber tires
The first practical pneumatic tire was made by John Boyd Dunlop, a Scot, in 1887 for his son's bicycle, in an effort to prevent the headaches his son had while riding on rough roads (Dunlop's patent was later declared invalid because of prior art by fellow Scot Robert William Thomson). Dunlop is credited with "realizing rubber could withstand the wear and tear of being a tire while retaining its resilience".[4]

Pneumatic tires are made of a flexible elastomer material, such as rubber, with reinforcing materials such as fabric and wire. Tire companies were first started in the early 20th century, and grew in tandem with the auto industry.