Pub. 5 2015 Issue 1

12 AT THE CENTER OF UTAH INDUSTRY P eople have been using gyp- sum as a building material for thousands of years. “Gyp- sum” comes from the Latin word “gypsos,” meaning “plaster.” His- torians have found examples of gypsum that was used in 3700 B.C. while the pyramid of Cheops was being built. The builders of that time wove straw laths to- gether and then applied gypsum blocks and plaster to the resulting latticework. It is still possible to see some of the results of their efforts today, including walls con - taining murals created in tinted plaster. Additional historic examples of how gypsum was used can be found in the palace of Crete’s King Minos around 1200 B.C., or in the work of sculptors during the Middle Ages. You might know that alabaster is a stone, but did you know that it consists of fine-grained sedimentary gypsum rock? Alabaster was popular for sculpting because it is easy to carve, and even relatively thick alabaster, with a depth of one or two inches, can allow light to pass through it. A French chemist named Lavoisier did a chemical analysis of gypsum in the late 1700s, and other chemists soon became interested, too. When huge gypsum reserves were discovered near Paris, people began mining it. Soon they had created something called Plaster of Paris, which is still in use today as a building material. Plaster of Paris is gyp- sum that has been chemically altered by heat, removing the water in the gypsum. When water is added back into the gyp- sum, it can be used to plaster a surface. The first use of gypsum in the U.S. was agricultural. Benjamin Franklin saw French farmers using gypsum as a soil additive, and he began promot- ing its use in farming when he returned from France. Initially, the U.S. bought its gypsum from Novia Scotia because people had not yet discovered it within U.S. borders. That changed in 1792 when gypsum was found in New York State. The discovery of other gypsum beds soon followed, including near Fort Dodge, Iowa, which later dominated the gypsum industry. According to J.M. Boutwell in bulletin number 223, pub- lished by the U.S. Department of the Interior and dated November 18, 1903, gypsum beds were also soon located throughout the U.S., including in central and southern Utah. In the late 19th century, gypsum’s use expanded beyond agricultural. Two men, Augustine Sackett and Fred Kane, decided to make wall boards from paper, straw, and tar in 1880. By 1888 they had created something they called “Sackett Board,” which was plaster of Paris be- tween layers of felt paper. Felt paper did not make a satisfactory wall finish, but it did make an excellent replacement for wooden slat lath. Gypsum plaster could then be applied on top. In 1893, the ChicagoWorld’s Colum- bian Exposition was built using a mixture of gypsum plaster and fiber. In 1894, Augustine Sackett patented a manufac- turing process for Sackett Board and by 1901, he was making almost five million square feet of the boards per year. He sold the Sackett Plaster Board Company to U.S. Gypsum, or USG, and served as USG’s director until he died in 1914. By 1916, the company was producing boards with a paper-based covering in standard, four-foot widths that were ready to finish. USG eventually changed the name of the product to sheetrock. Today, of course, it is also called dry- wall. The term “drywall” is a reference to the fact that, unlike plaster, installing drywall doesn’t require the use of water. Production of the original board was dis- continued less than a year later. Innovations continued during the following decades. Gypsum boards were the preferred fire-resistant building material for the construction of military housing during World War I, and the demand continued during World War II. In fact, this is when demand for gyp- sum board really increased. Plastering walls required a lot of work, and the U.S. was experiencing labor shortages in the construction industry. The U.S. was fo- cused on sending soldiers overseas, not building at home. There simply wasn’t enough time to install a layer of wet plas- ter and wait for it to dry before applying the next layer. Gypsum board, however, How Drywall Changed the Building Industry