We’ve all heard these phrases, but what exactly do they mean? Was early earthmoving equipment steam-powered, accounting for the name? I can’t imagine that steam has anything to do with the equipment used today. How far back does the expression go? Could Abraham Lincoln have seen a steam shovel, at least while visiting a big city like New York?
Scruff
November 11, 2002, 11:54pm
2
That’s exactly it. Steam power was used for all manner of things; pumps, diggers, and so forth. There was also a steam-driven farm tractor known as a traction engine.
Here’s a handy link with a picture of a steam shovel:http://www.railroadextra.com/pcbk206.Html
Ringo
November 12, 2002, 12:14am
3
A steam driven shovel , c. 1917.
One of the last of its kind, a 1932 Bucyrus-Erie 50-B Steam Shovel .
Fowler Steam Roller number 15752 .
Stuff about old steamrollers .
From Some Phases of the Industrial History of Pittsburg, Kansas :
The earliest known coal mining in southeast Kansas was about 1850, and was carried on to a limited extent by residents of neighboring sections of Missouri.
<snip>
The first real mining was done by the stripping process, using plows, scrapers and teams. The was profitable only where the overburden was light. But in most places where the overburden was light the coal was poor and limited in extent. As a result, that kind of mining soon ceased and remained in disuse until the coming of the modern steam shovel some thirty years later. However, an attempt at steam-shovel stripping was made in 1876, when Hodges and Armit began stripping near Pittsburg with a shovel made for railroad work.
<snip>
While that shovel was too small for general coal stripping, Hodges was satisfied that a shovel of sufficient size could be built. The shovel makers, however, declared a shovel of sufficient size to uncover a wide strip of deep coal was absolutely impractical and could not be made. [2] Nevertheless, such a shovel was built within the next thirty years. A revolving stripping shovel was first put into operation in the Pittsburg field in 1911.
And from Ideas at the Powerhouse :
The cable operated excavator is the earliest documented self- powered machine ever used to move earth. Its earliest form, the steam shovel, has roots going back to the very first mechanical excavator, the Otis Steam Shovel of 1835.
It’s a stretch, but Lincoln might’ve seen a steam shovel. There were plenty of other steam powered things about in his day.