The term “tarmac” dates back to a specific road material once used at airports—but modern runways are built from entirely different surfaces.
Tarmac. We’ve been using the word for what feels like forever.
- “The airplane taxied along the tarmac before taking off.”
- “The airport maintenance crew was resurfacing the tarmac.”
- “The airport is small and doesn’t have jet bridges so we’ll have to walk onto the tarmac“
How the term “tarmac” originated
Modern airport runways are typically made of asphalt or concrete, but the older term “tarmac” has remained part of everyday aviation language.
The word “tarmac,” funnily enough, was not made up by some airport owner who said, “Tarmac. I like how that rolls off the tongue. Let’s use that word for that thing planes taxi on.” You know, sort of how words like “Kodak,” “Häagen-Dazs” or “Sony” came to be.
Nope, it was named after what planes taxi on actually was – tarmacadam, which is a road surfacing material made of a mixture of crushed stone and sand (a.k.a. “macadam”) and tar.
The history of tarmacadam
Scottish engineer John Loudon McAdam invented macadam in the early 19th century. Plenty of roads used his new invention at the time, but they were prone to rutting and generating dust.
Over the next century, other inventors played around with adding materials to macadam to make it more stable. At least one tried pouring tar on the road, followed by the macadam, followed by a third layer, this time of tar and sand. But roads still quickly became potholed. It wasn’t until the early 20th century that Edgar Purnell Hooley figured out the proper mixture (heating the tar, adding slag to the mix and then breaking stones within the mixture to form a smooth road surface), and his tarmacadam (“tarmac” for short) was patented.
A 5-mile stretch of England’s Radcliffe Road, in West Bridgford, Nottingham, was the first tarmac road in the world.
When tarmac took over airports
It didn’t take long for tarmac to cross the pond to the United States. In 1927, the runway of one of the country’s first commercial airports, Chicago’s Midway Airport (previously known as Chicago Municipal Airport), was made of tarmac. And in the next 40 years or so, tarmac was king of airports across the country.
Why airports moved on from tarmac
Times change and, of course, cheaper and easier ways of doing things are invented. By the 1970s, asphalt and concrete had become the “kings” of airport runways. Asphalt is flexible, performs well under temperature changes, and costs less than tarmacadam. Concrete is significantly more durable than tarmac, with the ability to last over 30 years before needing to be replaced.
Why the name never went away
So although it’s still used at airports here and there, tarmac is out and other materials are in. And yet, by some quirk, using the term “tarmac” continues, even if, just like “using platforms” and “watching a film,” the original product generally isn’t in use anymore.
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