congress - Austria / II. Republic of Austria 1986 - 5 Shilling

Under the auspices of the "International Geotextile Society" took place from 7 to 11 April 1986 III. International Geotextile Congress held in the Vienna Hofburg. It was organized by the Austrian National Committee of the International Society of Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering. "Geotextiles" are textiles that are mainly used in "geotechnics", ie in civil engineering (earthworks and foundations, road and railroad construction, hydraulic engineering, tunneling, etc.). The decision to choose Vienna as the venue was not a coincidence, because Vienna is considered the birthplace of "soil mechanics" (scientific civil engineering). The founder of this technical discipline is Professor Karl von Terzagi, born in Prague in 1883 and deceased in the USA in 1963. He taught at the University of Vienna and began to scientifically investigate the relationships between the behavior of a building and its subsoil even before the First World War. Although the term "geotextile" was first coined in 1977 at the Paris Conference on the "Use of Textiles in Geotechnical Engineering" (the first International Geotextile Congress), the use of hides and blankets for the construction of buildings and roads up to traced back to antiquity. Only the development of non-rotting, synthetic materials brought the breakthrough, because they could withstand the manifold loads of soil, water and plant growth.