{"id":307,"date":"2011-11-30T07:39:22","date_gmt":"2011-11-30T13:39:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.infomercantile.com\/blog\/?p=307"},"modified":"2014-03-11T15:45:48","modified_gmt":"2014-03-11T20:45:48","slug":"electric-and-steam-shovels-1905","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.infomercantile.com\/blog\/2011\/11\/electric-and-steam-shovels-1905.html","title":{"rendered":"Electric and Steam Shovels, 1905"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.infomercantile.com\/-\/File:Electric-and-steam-shovels-vulcan-iron-works-1905-ad.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-308\" src=\"http:\/\/www.infomercantile.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/electric-and-steam-shovels-vulcan-iron-works-1905-ad_smaller.jpg\" alt=\"Ad for Electric and Steam Shovels, Vulcan Iron Works, Toledo OH, 1905\" width=\"500\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.infomercantile.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/electric-and-steam-shovels-vulcan-iron-works-1905-ad_smaller.jpg 500w, http:\/\/www.infomercantile.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/electric-and-steam-shovels-vulcan-iron-works-1905-ad_smaller-300x216.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>As technology changes, sometimes we get stuck on old terminology; we &#8220;dial&#8221; a phone, the first TV channel is &#8220;2&#8221;, and we flatten things with a &#8220;steamroller&#8221;. \u00a0Most steamrollers today, of course, are gas or diesel powered, but they&#8217;re still &#8216;steam&#8217; to us. \u00a0 Steam-power ran most construction machinery in the 19th century, but slowly faded out as modern power systems became reliable. \u00a0I still call big loaders &#8220;steamshovels&#8221;, even though they haven&#8217;t been steam-powered in a hundred years &#8211; but, unlike many other forms of technology, steamshovels took a leap to electricity early on. \u00a0In fact, a lot of heavy machinery was (<a href=\"http:\/\/gogeometry.com\/mining\/p&amp;h_2800xpc_4100xpc_mining_shovel.html\">and still is<\/a>) electric, because distance and freedom of movement wasn&#8217;t as big a deal, and effectively &#8216;outsourcing&#8217; power generation reduced weight and complexity. \u00a0Vulcan Iron Works produced steam shovels since the 1890s, and in this 1905 ad they were showing their steps into The Technology of Tomorrow: Electric Shovels. \u00a0 Vulcan was bought by Bucyrus five years later, and <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Bucyrus_International\">they&#8217;re still in making mining equipment today<\/a>, although under the Caterpillar name. \u00a0As far as terminology goes, &#8220;Electric Shovels&#8221; are now known more generically as <a href=\"http:\/\/gogeometry.com\/mining\/mining_power_shovel_index.html\">Power Shovels<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As technology changes, sometimes we get stuck on old terminology; we &#8220;dial&#8221; a phone, the first TV channel is &#8220;2&#8221;, and we flatten things with a &#8220;steamroller&#8221;. \u00a0Most steamrollers today, of course, are gas or diesel powered, but they&#8217;re still &#8216;steam&#8217; to us. \u00a0 Steam-power ran most construction machinery in the 19th century, but slowly [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[98,566,565],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.infomercantile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.infomercantile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.infomercantile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.infomercantile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.infomercantile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.infomercantile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1454,"href":"http:\/\/www.infomercantile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307\/revisions\/1454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.infomercantile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.infomercantile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.infomercantile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}