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• Asphalt Archaeology
  Mike Mission shot these beautiful images of objects embedded in asphalt, in New York streets.
• Asphalt Institute
• National Asphalt Pavement Association
  history of asphalt
• Asphalt Museum
  Jocular, but some good links. See in particular its "Official Asphalt Documents page, which shows an abstract of H. R. Bellamy's 1875 patent.

  Competition between proponents of asphalt and concrete for road surfaces has probably benefited both. Determination of the better material takes into account climate, usage, initial and long-term (40-50 year) costs, etc. Public consciousness about asphalt is colored by romantic ideas about "the road" and dystopian associations with the "asphalt jungle." Concrete looks cleaner, more "engineered."

• The New York chapter of the American Concrete Pavement Association provides its best argument for why concrete; the counterargument in favor of asphalt — for Minnesota, anyway — is provided by Bituminous Roadways Inc.
• "Asphalte, or Asphaltic Cement." Chambers's Edinburgh Journal No. 350 (October 13, 1838) : 299-300

  Examples early conceptualization and reception of asphalt. (My transcription, stretching code beyond test.)

  The Chambers's article discusses "an ingenious, learned, and speculative Greek, named Eirinis, (who) discovered a fine bed of Asphaltic rock..."

• The major early text on asphalt is Eirini d'Eyrinys, his Dissertation sur l'Asphalte ou Ciment Naturel. Paris: Philippe-Nicolas Lottin, 1721, and reprinted in M. Léon Malo, Guide Pratique pour la Fabrication et l'Application de l'Asphalte et des Bitumes. Paris: Librarie de la Société des Ingénieurs Civils, 1866

  A lengthy extract of the Eyrinis Dissertation, taken from Malo, can be found in the chapter on "Industrie de l'Asphalte et du Bitumine," in Louise Figuier his Merveilles de la Science, ou Description des Principales Industries Modernes : Industries Chimiques (1873-77) 3: 633-676. The passage from Malo begins at page 646.

  These digitizations are provided via Gallica, of Biblioth¸que nationale de France. I do not understand the relationship of this title to Figuier's earlier Merveilles de la Science ou Description Populaire des Inventions Modernes (1867-91).

  The Google Book project includes several historical texts on asphalt. Search subject "asphalt", full view only. For example :

• Herbert Abraham, Asphalts and Allied Substances: Their occurence, modes of production, uses in the arts and methods of testing (Second Edition, corrected). New York: Van Nostrand, 1920
  and
• T. Hugh Boorman, Asphalts, Their Sources and Utilization, subtitled "Asphalt for Dustless Roads, Recent Improvements in Asphalt Industries, Together with Addenda Treating on General Waterproof Construction." New York: William T. Comstock, 1908.

  Features poem, "Asphalt's Soliloquy" by W. S. Godwin "of the Texas Co."

   
  diversions

  • James Elkins explains "how to look at pavement" in his How to Use Your Eyes (2000). His primary reference is Freddy Roberts, Prithvi S. Kandhal et al., Hot Mix Asphalt Materials, Mixture Design, and Construction, 2nd ed (Lanham, MD: NAPA Education Foundation, 1996).
    great image here.
  • Visible when new, invisible now in its ubiquity, it is hard today to understand the symbolic power of asphalt and other paving materials earlier in our century and in the last. Jonathan Rée, in his I See a Voice: Deafness, language and the senses — a philosophical history (1999), quotes Alexander Melville Bell (Graham's father), his Visible Speech which, by "macadamizing the linguistic highway between nations...." (Rée 261).

    In that (1867) book, Bell proposes a Visible Speech Telegraphy, by which it "should ultimately be possible for a stranger to enter a Telegraph Office, pronounce his message, and have it despatched in his mother-tongue by one totally ignorant of the import of the sounds; and for the receiver of the message to hear it intelligibly pronounced from the writing by an official equally unacquainted with the meaning of what he reads." (p102)