ABSTRACT
John Loudon McAdam belongs to that select band of men whose lives have added household words to the English language. During the American War of Independence the two McAdams remained loyal to George III and in 1778 John married a young loyalist lady 'of great beauty and merit with a large fortune'. McAdam's experiences as road trustee in Ayrshire aroused his interest in the improvement of the highways at a time when the incessant and rapid expansion of the volume of wheeled traffic made better methods of road construction and maintenance a national necessity. From 1798, when he was appointed commissioner for victualling the Navy in the Western ports, McAdam, according to his own statement, 'began to make a business' of studying road problems. Sidney and Beatrice Webb considered that it was rather in the art of road administration than in road technology that McAdam so greatly served his day and generation.
