ABSTRACT
The eighteenth century saw the commencement of the great age of empirical road construction in Great Britain associated with the names of John Metcalf, John Loudon McAdam and Thomas Telford. Before dealing with Pierre-Marie-Jerome Tresaguet’s method of road construction it is necessary to say a few words about units of length in pre-Revolutionary France. The disturbances of the Revolution and the Imperial wars that followed pushed Tresaguet’s road construction ideas into the background until some 40 years later, in 1820, they were remembered and used again when the French road system was considerably extended. In 1798 a small French military expedition succeeded in landing in Ireland and this triggered an uprising against British rule. Although the incursion was promptly dealt with and the uprising was easily suppressed, the British Prime Minister, William Pitt the younger, decided that union of the two islands was the only way to restore order permanently in Ireland.
