"The structural effectiveness of any reinforced concrete, including ferrocement, depends on the almost miraculously fortuitous fact (first discovered in 1870 by ) that steel and concrete have close to identical coefficients of expansion, swelling at exactly the same rate when heated, shrinking at exactly the same rate when cooled. Thus they may be permanently bonded together as a single material, utilizing the best structural characteristics of each: steel has the tensile strength... while concrete has the ..."