The word concrete is a modern Chinese character, and its creator is Professor Cai Fangyin, a famous structural scientist. The word concrete first appeared in 1953. At that time, China's teaching equipment was still backward in terms of science and technology, there were no tape recorders and photocopiers, and students relied on handwritten notes in class. In the field of construction engineering, concrete is a word that is used very frequently, but it has many strokes, and it is laborious and time-consuming to write.
In order to solve this problem, Professor Cai Fangyin boldly replaced "concrete" with the word "artificial stone". The reason is that there are a total of 30 strokes for the three characters of "concrete", while there are only 10 strokes for the three characters of "artificial stone", so that 20 strokes can be omitted and the speed of writing is greatly improved. Subsequently, "artificial stone" gradually evolved into the word concrete, and began to be popularized among college students.
In July 1955, in the book "Structural Engineering Terminology" of the Terminology Office of the Compilation and Publication Committee of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the words concrete and concrete were officially recommended to be used together. Since then, the concrete character has been widely used in the literature of various construction projects. On June 7, 1985, the Chinese Character Reform Committee approved the use of concrete and concrete synonymously, giving concrete the legal status. In addition, the pronunciation of concrete (tóng) is similar to the pronunciation of the French word béton, the German beton and the Russian eton, which is conducive to international academic exchanges, so the concrete character is also regarded as a special word for construction projects.