page_title: Heavy equipment
section_title: From horses, through steam and diesel, to electric and robotic
hierarchical_section_title: Heavy equipment / History / From horses, through steam and diesel, to electric and robotic
caption_attribution_description: English: Identifier: belltelephonevol21mag00amerrich (find matches) Title: Bell telephone magazine Year: 1922 (1920s) Authors: American Telephone and Telegraph Company American Telephone and Telegraph Company. Information Dept Subjects: Telephone Publisher: (New York, American Telephone and Telegraph Co., etc.) Contributing Library: Prelinger Library Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive View Book Page: Book Viewer About This Book: Catalog Entry View All Images: All Images From Book Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book. Text Appearing Before Image: ' Text Appearing After Image: 4 Fig. 12. A bull-dozer eased offthe sharp drop ofthe ditch banks inpreparation for asquare crossing ofthis road. Roadsurface and shoul-ders and ditch banksare always restoredto their original con-dition Note About Images Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for readability - coloration and appearance of these illustrations may not perfectly resemble the original work.
context_page_description: Heavy equipment or heavy machinery refers to heavy-duty vehicles, specially designed for executing construction tasks, most frequently ones involving earthwork operations or other large construction tasks. Heavy equipment usually comprises five equipment systems: implementation, traction, structure, power train, control and information.
  Heavy equipment has been used since at least the 1st century BCE when the ancient Roman engineer Vitruvius described a crane in De architectura when it was powered via human or animal labor.
  Heavy equipment functions through the mechanical advantage of a simple machine, the ratio between input force applied and force exerted is multiplied, making tasks which could take hundreds of people and weeks of labor without heavy equipment far less intensive in nature. Some equipment uses hydraulic drives as a primary source of motion.
context_section_description: Until the 19th century and into the early 20th century heavy machines were drawn under human or animal power. With the advent of portable steam-powered engines the drawn machine precursors were reconfigured with the new engines, such as the combine harvester. The design of a core tractor evolved around the new steam power source into a new machine core traction engine, that can be configured as the steam tractor and the steamroller. During the 20th century, internal-combustion engines became the major power source of heavy equipment. Kerosene and ethanol engines were used, but today diesel engines are dominant. Mechanical transmission was in many cases replaced by hydraulic machinery. The early 20th century also saw new electric-powered machines such as the forklift. Caterpillar Inc. is a present-day brand from these days, starting out as the Holt Manufacturing Company. The first mass-produced heavy machine was the Fordson tractor in 1917.
  The first commercial continuous track vehicle was the 1901 Lombard Steam Log Hauler. The use of tracks became popular for tanks during World War I, and later for civilian machinery like the bulldozer. The largest engineering vehicles and mobile land machines are bucket-wheel excavators, built since the 1920s.
  "Until almost the twentieth century, one simple tool constituted the primary earthmoving machine: the hand shovel – moved with animal and human powered, sleds, barges, and wagons. This tool was the principal method by which material was either sidecast or elevated to load a conveyance, usually a wheelbarrow, or a cart or wagon drawn by a draft animal. In antiquity, an equivalent of the hand shovel or hoe and head basket—and masses of men—were used to move earth to build civil works. Builders have long used the inclined plane, levers, and pulleys to place solid building materials, but these labor-saving devices did not lend themselves to earthmoving, which required digging, raising, moving, and placing loose materials. The two elements required for mechanized earthmoving, then as now, were an independent power source and off-road mobility, neither of which could be provided by the technology of that time."
  Container cranes were used from the 1950s and onwards, and made containerization possible.
  Nowadays such is the importance of this machinery, some transport companies have developed specific equipment to transport heavy construction equipment to and from sites.
  Most of the major equipment manufacturers such as Caterpillar, Volvo, Liebherr, and Bobcat have released or have been developing fully or partially electric-powered heavy equipment. Commercially-available models and R&D models were announced in 2019 and 2020.
  Robotics and autonomy has been a growing concern for heavy equipment manufacturers with manufacturers beginning research and technology acquisition. A number of companies are currently developing (Caterpillar and Bobcat) or have launched (Built Robotics) commercial solutions to the market.
caption: Heavy equipment circa 1922
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