Use Profilometers On Hard Roads

Barrington Review
23 April 1925

Springfield — Mechanical caterpillas called “profilometers,” installed on the hard roads of Illinois to test their smoothness, have attracted attention of other highway departments throughout the country and requests from Ohio and South Carolina that the Illinois highway division go into the business of manufacturing them.

There are only two of them in operation. One has thirty-two overlapping wheels which touch every inch of the road surface the machine passes over, registering all roughness of a fourth inch in thickness and over. The other machine has sixteen wheels.

These machines, according to R. R. Benedict, assistant state highway engineer, have revolutionized the practices of road builders in Illinois. Several years ago the sole object of a road builder was to get dry surface down, but now, due to the judgments of motorists, who regarded roads according to smoothness, the additional quality is exacted. Bumps must be hammered down.