Excerpt from The Kleine Patent: Fire Resisting Floors Roofs and Staircases of Reinforced Hollow Bricks With or Without Centring IN the present day the uses of concrete are so diversified and so extensive that there is some justification for the statement that this is the Concrete Age. To be perfectly fair, however, we must admit that the Iron Age has not yet passed away, and that iron and steel continue to find employment in constructive work, sometimes in competition with concrete, and sometimes in harmonious co-operation with that material as exemplified in the combination known as Reinforced Concrete. The objects of this book are to set forth the essential nature of concrete, to describe briefly the materials of which it is composed, the manner in which these materials are proportioned and mixed, the methods adopted in practice for the application of the product to state as clearly and concisely as possible the funda mental principles of reinforced concrete, and to illustrate by references to typical examples of construction the remarkable characteristics of that happy union of concrete and steel. Owing to the limited amount of space at his disposal, the author. Has necessarily been compelled to abstain from dealing with some ramifications of the subject, and to touch lightly upon others. In the treatment adopted he has endeavoured to give such particulars as will not only be of interest to the general reader, but also of service to those engaged in the practical application of concrete to engineering and building construction. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.