Did the Industrial Revolution produce an automated digging contraption for roads and if so, what be it's mark?
Answers:
It is not certain who invented the first bulldozer.
Some historians give credit to an American name Benjamin Holt for inventing the first "bulldozer" in 1904, and originally calling it a "caterpillar" or a crawler tractor. However, this would be misleading.
Benjamin Holt did not Build a Bulldozer
Expert, Deas Plant from the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia commented that Benjamin Holt developed an endless secure tread for his steam traction engine at the end of 1904. At around the same time, the Hornsby company of England converted one of its wheel steam traction engine to a tracklayer [crawler] format based on a patent granted to their chief plot. Neither of these developments was a bulldozer, both were purely and simply track-laying traction engines. However, the Hornsby's altered copy was closer to the bulldozers we know today in that it be steered by controlling power to each track instead of having a tiller reins out in front of the tracks as Holt's machines did.
Hornsby sold their patents to Benjamin Holt around 1913-14.
First Came the Bulldozer Blade
It is not solid who invented the first bulldozer, however, the bulldozer blade was in use back the invention of any tractor. It consisted of a frame with a blade at the front into which were harness two mules. The mules would push the blade into a heap of dirt dumped by a cart and spread the dirt or push it over a wall to fill a hole or gully. The fun part come when you wanted the mules to back up for the subsequent push.
Definition of a Bulldozer
The term bulldozer technically refers only to a shovel-like blade, over the years empire have come to associate the term bulldozer to the entire vehicle both blade and crawler tractor combined.
Deas Plant added that "There is also some debate in the region of who first fitted a bulldozer blade to a track-laying tractor, perhaps the La Plante-Choate company, one of the early manufacturer of bulldozer blades."
Again, there are various claimants for the title of first to fit a power control to one of these bulldozer blades beside Robert Gilmour Le Tourneau probably being the leading contender.
The Caterpillar Tractor Company
The designation caterpillar was coined by a photographer working for Benjamin Holt who was taking photos of one of Holt's track-laying or crawler tractors. Looking at the machine's upside-down representation through his camera lens, he commented that the top of the track undulating over its carrier rollers looked approaching a caterpillar. Benjamin Holt liked the comparison and adopted it as the baptize for his track-laying system. He was using it for some years before the formation of the Caterpillar Tractor Company.
The Caterpillar Tractor Company be formed by the merger of the Holt company and their major competitor, the C. L. Best Gas Tractor Co., in August, 1925.
What Do Bulldozers and Bulls Have contained by Common?
It appears that the word bulldozer came from the habit of stronger bulls pushing their second-rate rivals backwards in not-so-serious contests of strength outside of the mating season. These contests steal on a more serious note during the mating season.
According to "Bulldozers" written by Sam Sargent and Michael Alves: "Around 1880, the adjectives usage of 'bull-dose' in the United States meant administering a full-size and efficient dose of any sort of medicine or punishment. If you 'bull-dosed' someone, you give him a severe whipping or coerced or intimidated him in some other way, such as by holding a gun to his director... In 1886, with a slight variation within spelling, a 'bulldozer' had come to mean both a large-caliber pistol and the creature who wielded it... By the late 1800s, 'bulldozing' come to mean using brawny force to push over, or through, any obstacle."
Special thankfulness to Mr. Deas Plant for the research Source(s): http://inventors.about.com/od/bstartinve…
its call an Italian with a shovel.
MIKE
Related Questions:
