Hennebique, François

François Hennebique, (born April 25, 1842, Neuville-Saint-Vaast, France—died March 20, 1921, Paris), French engineer who devised the technique of construction with reinforced concrete.

At the Paris Exposition of 1867, Hennebique saw Joseph Monier’s tubs and tanks built of concrete reinforced with wire mesh and was stimulated to seek a way to apply this new material to building construction. He began with reinforced-concrete floor slabs in 1879 and progressed to a complete building system, patented in 1892, using structural beams of concrete reinforced with stirrups and longitudinal bars designed to resist the tensile forces against which ordinary concrete was weak. In a few years he had perfected a system, still in general use, for reinforcing columns, beams, and floors, which he demonstrated in the construction of an apartment building in Paris.