When built in 1962, this shovel was the second largest in the world. It was used for the removal of overburden in the surface mining of thin coal seams. In its lifetime, it recovered nine million tons of bituminous coal from depths of 20 to 50 feet for local electric power generation. Standing 160-feet high, weighing 5,500 tons, and moving at speeds up to two-tenths of a mile per hour, the machine stripped about a square mile each year.
USA
YearAdded:
Image Credit:
Courtesy Flickr/KellyK (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Image Caption:
This picture of the Big Brutus Mine Shovel does not fully capture its immensity. To create a comparison, the average person would be slightly shorter than the treads, near the bottom.
Era_date_from:
1962
1987
Soon after gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill near Sacramento in 1848, General John Bidwell found gold near the Middle Fork of the Feather River. His discovery brought hordes of miners to the scene and Bidwell Bar was born. The Bidwell Bar Suspension Bridge over the Feather River was one of several suspension bridges built in the region in the 1850s, and is the only one that remains.
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Image Credit:
Public Domain (National Park Service)
Image Caption:
The original Bidwell Bar Suspension Bridge (1856), crossing over the Feather River
Era_date_from:
1856
1967
The first known pumping system providing drinking and wash water in the North American colonies. The building (still standing) is dated 1761, but it was preceded by an experimental frame building dated 1754. Before the Bethlehem built its system, assigned carriers would daily haul water up the hill from a well near the city gate. A wooden waterwheel, driven by the flow of Monocacy Creek, drove wooden pumps which lifted the water through wooden pipes to the top of the hill where the water was distributed by gravity.
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Image Credit:
Courtesy Flickr/Discover Lehigh Valley (CC BY 2.0)
Image Caption:
Through multiple restorations (1964, 1972, 1975), the Bethlehem Waterworks still stands today, despite being over 250 years old.
Era_date_from:
1761
1971
The St. Petersburg Yacht Basin was the original operating location of the St. Petersburg – Tampa Airboat Line, the nation’s first, regularly-scheduled commercial airline. The line’s inaugural flight was on January 1, 1914, with two daily, round-trip flights between St. Petersburg, Fla., and Tampa, Fla., using two Benoist Type XIV airboats. The flights were twenty-two minutes in length, one way, and rarely exceeded an altitude of five feet above the waters of Tampa Bay.
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Image Credit:
Courtesy of the Collections of Bjorn Larrson/David Zekria
Image Caption:
Central Yacht Basin
Era_date_from:
2010
Belle Fourche, meaning "Beautiful Forks" in French, refers to the confluence of the Redwater and Belle Fourche Rivers. The gold rush to the Black Hills in 1876 brought many people to the area, but agriculture and livestock soon became the principal industries. Farmers and civic leaders recognized the need for a reliable source of irrigation water in this semi-arid region and petitioned the Federal government for funds to build an irrigation and flood control system.
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Image Credit:
Public Domain (United States Bureau of Reclamation)
Image Caption:
An aerial view of the Belle Fourche Dam
Era_date_from:
1911
1988
This unit, retired from the Belle Isle Station of the Oklahoma Gas & Electric Company, was the first gas turbine to be used for electric utility power generation in the United States. It represents the transformation of the early aircraft gas turbine, in which the engines seldom ran more than ten hours at a stretch, into a long-life prime mover. This redesign was based upon creep-rupture tests of S-816 cobalt-base alloys for turbine buckets. The low-cost trouble-free service led to wide-scale adoption of the gas turbine, over 45 million kilowatt capacity (over 9 percent of U.S.
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Image Credit:
Image Courtesy of ASME
Image Caption:
Belle Isle Gas Turbine on static display in Schenectady, New York
Era_date_from:
1949
1984
Montogomery Bell was a land developer and iron maker who purchased the Harpeth Narrows site to expand his industrial empire - which ultimately consisted of 14 iron blast furnaces throughout middle Tennessee.
The Harpeth River makes a tight bend around a steep limestone ridge, losing 17 feet of elevation in a run of 5 1/2 miles. Bell excavated a tunnel through the limestone ridge, creating a shortcut for the river. The hydropower derived from this drop in elevation was used to drive the Patterson Iron Works built by Bell.
YearAdded:
Image Credit:
Public Domain (Author's Choice)
Image Caption:
Montgomery Bell's Tunnel
Era_date_from:
1818
1981
The longest steel-arch bridge in the world for 46 years, the Bayonne Bridge continues to be celebrated today as a major aesthetic and technical achievement. The 1,675-foot bridge replaced a ferry service which until then was the only means of crossing from the Bayonne peninsula to Staten Island. While providing this essential link in the transportation network of greater New York City, the bridge's mid-span clearance of 150 feet also allows for unobstructed navigation on Newark Bay, the main shipping channel to the inland ports of Newark and Elizabeth, New Jersey.
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Image Credit:
Courtesy Flickr/Raymond Bucko (CC BY 2.0)
Image Caption:
The graceful Bayonne Bridge was the longest steel-arch bridge in the world for 46 years.
Era_date_from:
1931
1985
Built by the Bay City Dredge Works of Bay City, Michigan, this dredge was used to construct a portion of US 41 called the Tamiami Trail, which connected Tampa with Miami through the Everglades and Big Cypress Swamp. The last remaining display of walking dredges (of some 145 walking machines), it has a unique propulsion design enabling the dredge to cope with drainage problems in a wetlands environment.
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Image Credit:
Courtesy Wikipedia/Ebyabe (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Image Caption:
The Bay City Walking Dredge as it sits in Collier-Seminole State Park
Era_date_from:
1924
1994
This is one of the three original 60-ton vessels by which the basic oxygen process (BOP) of steel making was introduced into this country from Austria, where it was invented. It heralded the first new technology in fifty years to become the basis of a major process for steel production throughout the world. In this process, a water-cooled lance injected a jet of high-purity oxygen into the bath of molten iron. Various chemical reactions produced a quality low-nitrogen steel at a ton-per-hour rate nearly three times that of the open hearth furnace.
YearAdded:
Image Credit:
Courtesy ASME
Image Caption:
Basic-Oxygen Steel Making Vessel
Era_date_from:
1955
1985
