A 1951 Chevrolet had a top speed around 85 to 90 mph. More expensive cars would be faster. The tiny BMC (Nash) Metropolitan had a cruising speed of 50mph and a top end around 75mph. Going back to 1940, a Chevy would be about as fast as that little Metropolitan.
So there were definitely vehicles capable of 55mph when the interstaes began to blossom. Thing is, I suspect that the speed limits were at least 65 in most areas up until the 1973 gasoline crisis.
Actually, though people do still use the term “tarmac” (here in the U.S., usually in reference to the paved areas of airports), the actual material has been completely supplanted by more modern paving materials. Nobody uses actual tarmac today.
Tarmac is short for “tar-macadam,” a method of paving dating back to the late 1800s/early 1900s. Macadam was an even older (early 1800s) method of road construction consisting of layers of stone packed together. Tar-macadam (i.e. “tarmac”) was created by adding a layer of tar over the surface to penetrate into the top layers of the road surface and bind it together.
Tarmac has been completely supplanted by modern asphalt pavement, which is more formally referred to as bituminous asphalt concrete pavement.
(Note the the term “concrete” here refers to the composite mixture of aggregate [i.e. stone] bound together with asphalt. It has nothing to do with Portland cement concrete, which is a composite material made up of aggregate bound together with Portland cement. Portland cement concrete is commonly referred to as “concrete,” while bituminous asphalt concrete is commonly referred to as “asphalt.”)
I think you missed the point. American “pavement” is not made of paving stones, anymore than British “tarmac” is made (any more) of tarmacadam.
The difference, though, is that “tarmac” actually refers to a specific (though no longer used) material for roads.
I don’t think “pavement” necessarily implies anything about the material in question, much less specifically paving stones. The word “pavement” simply means a hard surface (as well as the material making up the surface), which goes along with the etymology of the word.
You can pave a road with macadam, tarmac, asphalt, or concrete. It’s all pavement (at least in the U.S.).
Wiki says the first concrete pavement on a street was in Bellefontaine, OH in 1891, and first mile in Detroit in 1909. Note thatextending the mileage of concrete was a slow process. The Interstate system began in the '50s. US (Federal) highways were mostly paved before that, altho I was told that US highways in western Nebraska weren’t paved until after WWII. I think many cars could exceed the speed limits from the first; at least higher end ones. It used to be said that Chevies before 1950 (?) should not be driven for long times at speed, since they had splash lubrication, not oil pumps. Contractor I once worked for said that, for driveways, concrete lasted 3 times longer than asphalt, and cost 3 times as much.
Story is that it was the bicycle clubs that campaigned for better roads, before autos became common.
The Persian Empire had a lot of paved roads 2400 years ago. They also had a “Pony Express” system where a rider could switch to a fresh horse at stations on established trails.
The Greeks mostly used human runners at this point. But trained humans are pretty good against horses in high heat conditions, and the broken terrain of Greece favored humans.
c. 1930. (for Chicago to New York. I’d guess rather earlier for two big cities in England, the distances being so much shorter).
Source: the (excellent) “Big Roads” book Exapno Mapcase mentioned.
Interesting replies, thanks. Re concrete (as in cement) roadways, some stretches of British motorway are paved with concrete, and I always find them obnoxiously noisy to drive over. I think it’s because they are usually grooved - I assume to increase grip, as concrete on its own tends to be rather smooth and slippery compared to asphalt.
Going back to the A1 (Great North Road) between Edinburgh and London, this page has a photo (near the top on the right) of the road at Stevenage dated 1903 before the road was tarred (although it doesn’t say just when that was done)
And this page on the same site, if you can read it, goes into some more detail of what roads were like and how they improved them…
Not what you asked, but I seem to recall reading years ago that the A93 in the east of Scotland wasn’t paved/tarred until the mid 1920s. 1928 maybe.
And I don’t know why this thread seems to fascinate me; other than I like to bitch about the roads! 
It actually is sort of a status symbol in the upscale city neighborhoods north of Detroit to live on a gravel road that is in total disrepair. The point being that the people who live there own huge vehicles that can handle the ride (and they have their own private car washes); so no one else bothers going down their street to gawk at their mansions because it’s not worth the trouble of getting your car tore up or losing commute time. So it’s gone full circle, only poor people need paved roads! 
As for concrete vs asphalt, it might depend on the area. The upper midwest has brutal winters, and uses a lot of concrete. Since it costs more to install unless they’re in bed with the concrete lobby you wouldn’t think they’d install it unless the overall life cycle cost was lower. Florida has a mild climate but presumably soft, swampy ground and uses a lot of asphalt. The optimal pavement might depend on soil type, climate, traffic type and volume, proximity to raw materials.
The high pitched whine driving over concrete is caused by using metal rakes to “roughen up” the surface. At a stretch of I-35W in Richfield, besides using superior materials in an attempt to get a 60 year life from the pavement, Mn/DOT used weighted astroturf instead of a metal rake to roughen up the surface, this prouduces a low rumble when driven over rather than the more annoying whine.
Who would classify “plain dirt” as paved? It’s the exact opposite, isn’t it? 
In the small town where I live in England, the biggest and most expensive houses are on unpaved gravel roads (little more than tracks through woodland, really), with huge potholes. They’re in a conservation area and I believe the roads aren’t allowed to be paved, to protect the character of the neighbourhood.
I just received in email a link to Stanford professor, IT specialist create interactive map of the Roman Empire which may be close enough to on-topic to warrant a look.
A bit off topic, but wnen I was growing up in the UK in the early/mid 60s, before the motorway system was very developed, when we went on holiday by car* every time we crossed a county boundary the make-up of the tarmac used changed abruptly.
Some County roads departments used a very black mix, some had more white chips mixed in and Aberdeenshire (iirc) had a reddish colour to their main roads! The noise generated by driving on the different surfaces changed a bit too.
The year we went to Ballater my dad drove up the A93 on a Saturday in the height of summer when there was a queue of traffic all straining to make it up and over the Devil’s Elbow! You had to leave a fair bit of space between cars in case the one in front had to reverse to have another shot at getting up speed to make it past particularly steep bits!In the early/mid 1960’s Virginia the main East/West route over the Blue Ridge mountains from Charlottesville to the Shenandoah Valley was US Route 250. My grandparents described it as gravel and having lots of switchbacks. That made a trip from Charlottesville to the Valley take all day sometimes if there were trucks slowing things down.
Let me amend that, it may have been before the 1960’s when Route 250 was still gravel. They just moved to the Charlottesville area in the 1960’s, but they had been in the general area for decades before that.