This is a patent for a less dense or lighter concrete mixture using dried animal blood. I can say that in the 30+ years as a project engineer in the building trade I have never ever seen this mixture referenced, ever!
There are far more effective and cheaper ways to make a lighter mix of concrete. This patent was useless when issued and is certainly of no importance today.
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I appreciate your explaining that, GregNH. It is calling to my mind the creepy secrets of swordmaking with Damascus steel that I read about a number of years ago.
I’m hoping that Swordmaker has the right of it,and can share a better understanding than I do, but back [I think] in the Middle Ages, the secret of tempering steel with carbon was learned..... and the carbon used, as I understand it, in many cases, was a live human who was run through with it.
” ...Writings found in Asia Minor said that to temper a Damascus sword the blade must be heated until it glows ‘’like the sun rising in the desert.’’ It then should be cooled to the color of royal purple and plunged ‘’into the body of a muscular slave’’ so that his strength would be transferred to the sword.
In the ancient accounts there is more than one reference to such homicidal quenching. In a recent interview, Dr. Nickel pointed out that while many of the quenching techniques were based on superstition, they may have contributed to the success of the process, as by adding nitrogen to the alloy....”
https://www.nytimes.com/1981/09/29/science/the-mystery-of-damascus-steel-appears-solved.html
It is very strange to wish to invest cement/concrete and steel with blood, whether human or not. Clearly, as you say, there have to be better solutions. And, it seems apparent in both cases, human blood will work - but is not required.
“These people are sick.”
They were called "Slave Swords" And were in some cultures extremely sought after. Others thought they drank the souls of those they cut, killing them faster. Naturally, they were very expensive, due to the added cost of the slave in the making.
Such swords may be both mythical and apocryphal. . . as no such examples seem to have survived to modern times with any sure provenance.
The intricate history of a beautiful antique violin is traced from its creation in Cremona, Italy, in 1681, where a legendary violin maker (Carlo Cecchi) paints it with his dead wife's blood to keep her memory alive.
