Early History

A steam shovel is a large steam powered excavating machine designed for lifting and moving material such as rock and soil. It was invented by William Otis who received a patent for his design in 1839.

Steam shovels became more popular in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Originally configured with chain hoists, the advent of steel cable in the 1870's allowed for easier rigging to the winches. Expanding railway networks in the U.S. fostered a demand for shovels; it can be said that the extensive milage of railways, and corresponding cubic yards of material to be moved in North America, forced the technological leap. As a result, steam shovels became common. American manufacturers included the Marion Steam Shovel Company which was founded in 1884, Erie, P and H, and Bucyrus Shovel Companies.

The Panama Canal

Technological necessity is obvious with the most famous application of steam shovels--that of digging the Panama Canal across the Isthmus of Panama in the opening decades of the twentieth century. One-hundred two shovels were put to work in that

Mining

Mining also benefitted from steam shovels: the iron mines of Minnesota, the copper mines of Chile and Montana, placer mines of the Klondike all had earth moving equipment. It was with the burgeoning open pit mines: first in Bingham Canyon, Utah, that shovels came into their own. The shovels systematically removed hillsides. As a result, steam shovels were used around the world from Australia to Russia to coal mines in China. Shovels were also used for construction, road and quarry work.

Operation

A steam shovel consists of wheels and truck, (sometimes caterpillar tracks or railroad wheels). a house which contains a frame, boiler, water and coal tanks, steam engines and winches, operators controls and mounts for the shovel boom. The shovel has several individual operations: it can raise or luff the boom, rotate the house, or extend the dipper stick out with the boom or crowd engine, and raise or lower the dipper stick.

When digging, the shovel works at a rockface and the operator simulateously raises the dipper stick, and extends it at the same time. In this way, the bucket grabs a complete shovel full. When the bucket is full, the shovel rotates to a load a railway car or motor truck. The locking pin on the bucket flap is released and the load drops away. The operator lowers the dipper stick, the bucket mouth self closes, the pin relocks automatically and the process repeats. Steam shovels usually had a three man crew: engineer, fireman and ground man. There was much jockeying to do to move shovels, rails and timber blocks to move; cables and block purchases to attach, chains, and slings to rig and so on. On soft ground, shovels used timber mats, to help steady and level the ground. The early models were not self propelled, rather they would use the boom to manoevre themselves.

Steam shovels came into their own in the 1920's with the publically funded road building programs around North America. Thousands of miles of State Highways were built in this time period. Also constructed in the period were new factories, such as Henry Ford's River Rouge Plant, and many docks, ports, buildings, and grain elevators. Dams such as the Hoover or Boulder dam could not have been built without steam shovels. During the 1930's steam shovels lost out to the simpler, cheaper Diesel powered excavating shovels that we still see today. Open pit mines were electrified at this time. Only after the Second World War, with the advent of robust high pressure hydraulic hoses did the more flexible hydraulic backhoe shovels take pre-eminence over the cable hoisting winch shovels.

Power Shovels and Draglines

Large, multi ton mining shovels still use the cable lift shovel arrangement. In the 1950's and 1960's Marion Shovel built massive stripping shovels for coal operations in the Eastern U.S.. Shovels of note were the Marion 360, the Marion 5900, and the Marion 6360 with a 180 cubic yard bucket; while Bucyrus constructed one of the most famous monsters: the Big Muskie. Such shovels use an enormous scraping bucket called a dragline. See article Marion Power Shovel. Later models of draglines became so gargantuan that, in order to move them, engineers placed mechanical feel under them and thus they were christened walking draglines. Although these big machines are still called steam shovels, more correctly, they are power shovels using electricity to wind their winches.

Other Historic Shovel Makers

Northwest Shovels; Vulcan Iron Works; Moore Speedcrane (later Manatowoc); European manufacturers of shovels included Ruston-Hornsby, Orenstein and Koppell, Menck, Demag and Lubecker for example.

Modern builders include

Bucyrus; P and H; Link Belt; Komatsu;

Trivia

Steam shovels have also found literary fame with the classic book "Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel."

During the Spanish Flu epidemic in 1918, so many people were dying that plague pits were dug with steam shovels.

External links

• http://www.bucyrus.com
• http://members.tripod.com/dsmdonaldson/id59.htm
• http://www.copperrange.org/shovel.htm
• http://www.stripmine.org
• http://www.phmining.com/overview/history.html
• http://www.linkbelt.com/linkbelt/about/frameabout.htm

Industrial equipment