On this day in 1870, a U.S. professor who had emigrated from Belgium applied an asphalt sheet to William Street in Newark, New Jersey as a test. It worked. Edward de Smedt, the inventor of asphalt mix, proved the value of his invention in combating the ubiquitous mud or dusty roads of the day.
Even though de Smedt’s asphalt worked well, by 1904, there were only 154 miles of paved highway in the entire country. Today, there are more than a million miles of urban highways, including more than 59,000 miles of interstate roads and other freeways, according to the Census Bureau.
