Nineteenth century Heidelberg, then and now a picturesque medieval German city, saw the founding of an enterprise that has flourished for over 150 years. In 1873, Johann Philipp Schifferdecker took over a failed local grain mill and quickly turned it into a manufacturing plant for a new breed of construction material called Portland cement. While cement has been in use continually since ancient times, Portland cement was a new invention, stronger and more reliable than historic versions.