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Biography
pp-semi-indefOther usesrefimprove|date=November 2011Most shovels are hand tool s consisting of a broad blade fixed to a medium-length handle. Shovel blades are usually made of sheet metal|sheet steel or hard plastics and are very strong. Shovel handles are usually made of wood (especially specific varieties such as Fraxinus|ash or maple ) or glass-reinforced plastic (fibreglass).
Hand shovel blades made of sheet steel usually have a folded seam or hem at the back to make a socket for the handle. This fold also commonly provides extra rigidity to the blade. The handles are usually rivet ed in place. A T-piece is commonly fitted to the end of the handle to aid grip and control where the shovel is designed for moving soil and heavy materials. These designs can all be easily mass production|mass-produced .
The term shovel is also applied to larger excavating machines called power shovel s, which are designed for the same purpose, namely, digging, lifting, and moving material. Modern power shovels are the descendants of steam shovel s. loader (equipment)|Loaders and excavator s (such as backhoe s) perform very similar work, etic ally speaking, but they are not classified as shovels emic ally.
Hand shovels have been adapted for many different tasks and environments. They can be optimized for a single task or designed as cross-over or compromise multitasking|multitaskers . Examples are given under " #Types|Types ".
Types
Name (and synonym s if any) !! Description
Some linguistic prescription|usage prescriptions prescribe that the words "spade" and "shovel" should be held in contradistinction (piercing and digging spade versus scooping and moving shovel). Natural language does not widely follow these prescriptions; it more often treats "spade" and "scoop" as contradistinguished subsets under "shovel".
History
In neolithic times and earlier a large animal's scapula (shoulder blade) was often used as a crude shovel. http://books.google.co.uk/books? id=iSd8hm5kImwC& pg=PA304#v=onepage& f=false Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology, p. 304.
Manual shoveling (often in combination with pickaxe|picking ) was the chief means of excavation in construction until mechanization via steam shovel s and later hydraulics|hydraulic equipment ( excavator s such as backhoe s and loader (equipment)|loaders ) gradually replaced most manual shoveling. The same is also true of the history of mining and quarry ing and of bulk material handling equipment|materials handling in industries such as steel mill|steelmaking and stevedore|stevedoring . Railroad car s and hold (ship)|cargo holds containing ore , coal , gravel , sand , or grain s were often loaded and unloaded this way. These industries did not always rely exclusively on such work, but such work was a wikt:ubiquitous#Adjective|ubiquitous part of them. Until the 1950s, manual shoveling employed large numbers of workers. Groups of workers called labor gangs were assigned to whatever digging or bulk materials handling was needed in any given week, and dozens or hundreds of workers with hand shovels would do the kind of rapid excavating or materials handling that today is usually accomplished with powered excavators and loaders operated by a few skilled operators. Thus the labour economics|cost of labor , even when each individual worker was poorly paid, was a tremendous expense of operations. Productivity of the business was tied mostly to workforce productivity|labor productivity . It still often is even today; but in the past it was even more so. In industrial and commercial materials handling, hand shoveling was later replaced not only with loaders and backhoes (as in excavating) but also with electric ally actuated equipment such as conveyor system|conveyors , auger s, and elevator s.
Anchor|science_of_shovelingGiven the central importance and cost of manual labour in industry in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the applied science|applied "science of shoveling" was something of great interest to developers of scientific management such as Frederick Winslow Taylor .Harvnb|Taylor|1911, http://books.google.com/books? id=HoJMAAAAYAAJ& pg=PA64#v=onepage& f=false pp. 64–75. Taylor, with his focus on time and motion study , took an interest in differentiating the many motions of manual labor to a far greater degree than others tended to. Managers might not care to analyze it ( Manual labour#simplistically_equating_manual_labour_to_low_skill_and_class|figuring that brute work is brute work, case closed ), and workers might not care to analyze it in any way that encouraged management to take away the wikt:prerogative#Noun|prerogative in craft production|craft work for the craftsman to decide the details of his methods. Taylor realized that failing to analyze shoveling practice represented a missed opportunity to discover or synthesize best practice s for shoveling, which could achieve highest productivity (value for dollar spent). It was Taylor and colleagues in the 1890s through 1910s that greatly expanded the existing idea of varied shovel designs with different-sized scoops, one for each material, based on the material's density. Under scientific management, it was no longer acceptable to use the same shovel for shoveling brown coal one day and gravel the next. Taylor advocated the higher capital cost of maintaining two shovels as more than paying for itself through the increase in worker productivity that it would lead to, which would mean less money being spent on wage s for each unit of shoveling work accomplished. Unfortunately, despite Taylor's valid insights about the possibility for applying science to manual labour (including shoveling and the lifting and carrying of heavy objects) and his valid insights about the inequality of talents between individuals, he did not really respect the human dignity of all workers, and tended to be contemptuous of people with low intelligence.Harvnb|Taylor|1911, http://books.google.com/books? id=HoJMAAAAYAAJ& pg=PA59#v=onepage& f=false p. 59. The science of shoveling that is, hand shoveling has long since mostly faded out of commercial concern thanks to extensive mechanization, such as bulldozers and other equipment. Humans are once again mostly content to let one coal scoop handle various bulk materials of differing densities.
During the Second industrial revolution around year 1900, the shovel gave way to heavy equipment such as excavator s.
References
Reflist
See also
dustpan , a form of shovel
Bibliography
Citation | last = Taylor | first = Frederick Winslow | authorlink = Frederick Winslow Taylor | year = 1911 | title = The Principles of Scientific Management | publisher = Harper & Brothers | location = New York, NY, USA and London, UK | url = http://books.google.com/books? id=HoJMAAAAYAAJ& pg=PA3#v=onepage& f=false | oclc = 233134 | doi = | ref = harv | postscript =. http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/6435 Also available from Project Gutenberg. | lccn = 11010339
commons category|Shovels and spadesTypes of tools Category:Snow removal Category:Mechanical hand tools Category:Gardening tools
