Tarmac roads

[Mothmig]

I have always wondered when was the golden age for tarmac-ing roads, as vertually every road in the UK - including tiny Devon lanes where I live - has a good surface on it (when I saw good surface I mean as opposed to a rough track or green lane). Did it just spread from the cities outwards? Where some local councils better than others at getting roads passable? Was it the rise of the motor car that prompted it?
Not sure this should be in how it works but there isn't a civil engineering section!

[Catso]

Several small lanes near where I live have now been 'abandoned' by the council. They now range from stone strewn tracks to mixed tarmac, holes and stones. They were all proper tarmac when I was young.

[Golden Shred]

Wherever you go in the world, and as far back as 4,000 BC, stone is the common ingredient in roads. Simple stone roads were often rough, uneven, and pitted with ruts and holes that filled up with rain and mud in the winter. It wasn't until the 1700s that the smooth, even roads we know today became possible. We have three Scottish engineers and their improved road building techniques to thank. Although he was blind, John Metcalfe was able to design and build firm, three-layer roads. First he placed large stones on the bottom layer, then he took the materials excavated from the roadbed such as smaller rocks and earth and used them for the middle layer, and finally he spread a layer of gravel on top. A second Scottish gentleman by the name of Thomas Telford designed a way to raise the centre of the road so that rainwater would drain down the sides. He also devised a method to analyse how thick the road stones had to be to withstand the weight and volume of the horses and carriages that were common in his day. The last of the three, John McAdam, mixed the necessary road stones with tar. The tar "glued" all the stone together and created a harder and smoother surface for the carriage wheels to roll on. "Tarmacadam roads" became the standard used everywhere until the 1870s when asphalt took over.

[Golden Shred]

Professor Edward J. de Smedt invented modern road asphalt in 1870 at Columbia University in New York City after emigrating from Belgium. He called it "sheet asphalt pavement" but it became known as French asphalt pavement. A natural rock known as asphalt had been used to construct buildings for many years. In 1824 large blocks of natural asphalt rock were placed on the wide boulevard in Paris known as the Champs-�lys�es. This was the first time this type of rock was used for a road. On 29 July 1870, the first sheet of Edward de Smedt's asphalt pavement was laid on William Street in Newark, New Jersey. He then engineered a modern, "well-graded," maximum-density road asphalt. The first uses of this road asphalt were in Battery Park and on Fifth Avenue in New York City in 1872. Today almost all the roads in developed countries are surfaced with De Smedt's man-made asphalt. Asphalt comes from the processing of crude oils. The word asphalt comes from the Greek "asphaltos," meaning "secure". The story of asphalt begins thousands of years ago - the infant Moses' basket was waterproofed with asphalt. Sir Walter Raleigh used it for re-caulking his ships. So, to sum up, in the early 1800s Thomas Telford built more than 900 miles of roads in Scotland, perfecting the method of building roads with broken stones. Later, hot tar used to bond the broken stones together, producing "tarmacadam" pavements. And then in 1870 Belgian chemist Edward J. De Smedt laid the first true asphalt pavement in the U.S. the use of which quickly spread world wide and is in use today.

[gary baldy]

The 'golden age' as you call it was during the war and immediately after the war. Before then most urban and trunk roads were tarmaced but country lanes and minor roads were, at best, roughly made tracks - although the inter war period had seen great improvements. The need to transport goods and troops around was paramount in war time especially when military installations could be in isolated rural locations.
The war saw an unprecedented amount of movement in and around the country and it is one of the many unrecognised legacies of the war years that our road network was improved in that time.
Because people got used to the increased mobility the war brought,road travel increased massively after the war and virtualy all minor roads were tarmaced and major trunk roads were much improved.
Motorways , an idea copied from the Germans, had been planned before the war but it wasnt until 1958 that Preston got its by pass and the UK got its first motorway.

[Tatty Rollox]

.... and here baby Moses in his asphalted basket is pulled from the bullrushes and shown to Pharaoh's daughter ..

[Mothmig]

Thanks all for the answers, I suspected WWII was the catalyst and was amazed that asphalt is such an old technology. That Paris date is going to make a great quiz question.