06/07/2026
On this day in 1899, Thomas Edison organized the Edison Portland Cement Company. Portland Cement Technology extended back to antiquity, used in combination with a mixture of sand to construct Egyptian pyramids and to make pozzolana in Roman Times. It was not until 1824 that Joseph Aspdin, an English bricklayer, introduced the modern ingredient, limestone. After the Civil War, Portland Cement was imported to America from England at little to no cost. Out of the iron ore failures Edison faced at his Ogden plant, he adapted the technologies to the emerging Portland Cement business. At Stewartsville, a mere five miles north of Easton, Pennsylvania, a rich vein of cement rock was found, and Edison snapped up 800 acres of land there for his research.
In the forefront of Edison’s philosophy about cement, beyond the challenge of manufacture, was the desire to “evolve something to make the struggle for existence easier for the wage earner.” That invention became realized in one of his most quintessential inventions, the poured house. He would devote his resources to granting the dream of every American, the cheap one-family home. A 25x30x40-foot-high modular “house mold” with two-foot-thick double walls was the first built out of 500 cast iron sections bolted together upon concrete flooring. At the very top of the roof mold was a funnel-like opening, with tributary pipes and open troughs leading to other, smaller apertures. A mixture of quick-hardening cement was raised in buckets to the top of the mold from a mixer connected to a conveyor belt. Over a six-hour period, the mold was filled and dismantled after hardening. One of the first structures built to test the properties of the concrete was a garage on Edison’s Llewellyn Park pr
operty.
One of the most important improvements Edison made in cement manufacture was the design of a long rotary kiln that he licensed to other manufacturers, as well as the formation of an automated plant in Stewartsville, New Jersey. The cement was used extensively for buildings, roads, dams, and other structures, including Yankee Stadium.
