Born on 21 September
1756, in Ayr, McAdam was the son of a landowner. In 1770 he went to work
in the New York counting-house of a relative, returning in 1783 with a
tidy fortune to purchase the estate of Sauchrie in Ayrshire.
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Holding the post of a
turnpike road trustee, McAdam was very aware of the unsatisfactory
condition of roads in Britain; when it rained they quickly became very
difficult or impassable. He began to experiment with various methods of
road building. Acquiring the British Tar Company in 1790, it was a
loss-maker to the extent that in 1795 he had to sell Sauchrie to pay off
debts. He then moved to Falmouth, Cornwall, in 1798, where he was able to
continue road experiments with a government appointment.
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His blinding flash of
insight was that if the subsoil were adequately drained, and if a 10-inch (250mm) layer of broken and graded stone chips, properly cambered, were
laid on this, the effects of traffic would be not to break up the surface
as before, but in fact compact the surface. In this way the macadam road
surface came about, leading to a vast improvement in communications by
road, not only in Britain, but in the United States.
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Several sons and
grandsons continued his work, designing and surfacing much of Britain's
roads. He died on 26 November 1836, at Moffat, Dumfriesshire.
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