The Classic Construction Series - 500 Years of Earth Moving - By Heinz-Herbet Cohrs - SECONDHAND

Large Format A4 hardbound book 260 pages, a large number of pictures mainly B&W.

About this title - 

"The movement of earth and the remodelling of the landscape has always been a source of fascination for man. Man has acted as "architect" throughout his entire civilised past, with the building and moving of earth constantly playing an important role. The first traces of our cultural heritage are not only to be found in art, but also in building and agriculture."

This is how "500 Years of Earthmoving" starts its in-depth look at the development of earthmoving machinery over the past 500 years. Over 260 pages the colourful book charts the evolution of earthmoving machinery and techniques over the years and gives a fascinating insight into how modern-day machines came into being. But, as with all good stories, the tale starts at the beginning. Mining was carried out as early as the Neolithic age when the main desire was to obtain flint from chalk to make weapons and tools.

About six thousand years ago, with the progression from the Neolithic age to the Copper age, the change from hoe farming to the plough culture took place. It was at this time that the oldest known piece of earthmoving equipment appeared: the simple wooden plough.

In fact the plough features throughout the history of mankind. 5200 years after it was first invented it was to undergo a tremendous metamorphosis, transforming itself into what was to become today's grader and scraper and into other important forms of earthmoving equipment.

A major theme in the book is that earthmoving machines are important parts of human culture, they mirror contemporary thought, technical possibilities and the everyday working world of our forefathers. The development of earthmoving machines tells the story of our culture as does art or the history of peoples and states.

The quickly forgotten development of building techniques never attracts the same attention as the history of weapons, for example, either in public or in museums. It is for these reasons, among others, that the history of these machines has finally been written down as comprehensively as possible for safekeeping. Without the need to build there would be no construction equipment, without construction equipment there would be no long stretches of road, or rail networks, no great waterways or airports. Dams wouldn't be as high and there would be no connecting bridges or tunnels.

The book points out that earthmoving equipment followed three stages of development. In early times, machines took over the dredging of ports, canals and rivers, not to save on manual labour - because at that time labour was cheap - but because manual work proved to be impractical. These early machines were built for use on waterways.

Then came the next stage of development; with the world-changing invention of the railway, earthmoving machines were adapted for use on rails, were used to build the railway, as well as being transported by rail. Their appearance changed again early this century when they were adapted for road use, as they were increasingly transported by road rather than rail. Large numbers of these machines were used in the construction of roads and motorways, especially during the middle of the 20th Century.

The origins of earthmoving machines can certainly be traced back to the early days of technology, but try to delve any further into the past, and the traces soon disappear. The dragbucket, pulled along by animals, can be seen as the first specialised earthmoving device. It was a development of the plough, already thousands of years old when the dragbucket was first used.

How great was the increase in performance as compared to earlier methods? We cannot be sure, but a worker using a pickaxe and shovel, and with a basket on his back, could move roughly two cubic metres of earth over a distance of just 200 metres in the course of a 12-hour day. By comparison, during the building of the San-Luis dam in California in 1964 almost 1.5 cubic metres of earth were moved per second from the source site 20 kilometres away!