ONCE WORTH £30,000.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 198, 22 August 1935, Page 11

ONCE WORTH £30,000.

NOW LIVES ON CHARITY.

INVENTED REINFORCED CONCRETE

(Special.—By Air Mail.)

LONDON, July 27,

The man who, 70 years ago, revolutionised the building trade by inventing reinforced concrete, is to-day living in fear 'of a pauper's grave. Joseph Tall, at 84, lives In a tiny cottage at Coggeshall, Essex. He was 14 when he patented his invention as "a method of reinforcing concrete in order to render it suitable for building," ar.d he was hailed a= a genius. , ' He went on to invent and patent more than a score of other inventions covering the whole field of concrete construction.

He was 15 when he put up the first concrete buildings t at Bexley Heath, Kent, and two year& later .Napoleon 111. commissioned him to build a block of 40 flats in Paris. Buildings all over the world stand as memorials to his invention. At 21 he was worth £30,000.

It was with the floating of a company to run the business that things began to go wrong. Before he was 25 mcney and position had gone. He had no money to prevent his patents lapsing. His last few pounds went to b ry his mother. The master became an artisan. The inventor worked as a painter and decorator. With .6 dge came unemployment. On the old-age pension he und his wife, who is 73, went to live at Coggeshall. They lacked food and fuel until, three years go, the Cement Manufacturers' Association heard of their plight, and made then a email allowance. "I am afraid of one thing," he said, "that when I die I shall be buried by the parish—a pauper."