Google Earth Community: Architect Arthur Erickson

Yes! How wonderful that you were able to find that.

So the story starts with James Porteous who transformed an important task as old as time through a novel use of technologies that were well established even in Roman times. (Which is to say, he was very clever.) The Fresno Scraper instalntly became "the way it was done." As your post mentions, the only real change was in 1910 or so with the substitution of a tractor as the object pulling the scraper and the mechanization of the scrape, slide, dump control.

Then came the next very clever inventor, R. G. LeTorneau. a man that I admire with all my heart. His story is told in Mover of Men and Mountains (also available here.) So 'RG' is in the grading business and for interesting reasons decides to bid on building the Grapevine Pass, what is now the long winding canyon-following part of California's Highway 5 between Bakersfield and Los Angeles. He gets the contract largely because no one else thinks the job can be done. He hires lots of people and goes up into the canyons. Just below the surface soil he finds granite. This is very bad when you consider that the Fresno Scraper was the only element of earthmoving equipment at the time (1938).

It is a big moment in his life and I'll not give away the process, but what he comes up with is the realization that in addition to lots of dynamite he needs a huge Fresno, that no 'tractor' could pull or maneuver such a thing on a rocky slope (tractors in that day had flat metal wheels with bumps). He invents a self-powered single-axle scraper with rubber tires--the same thing you see at roadsides today scraping dirt. (Tournapull and Carayall.) He went on to complete the project (see the attachment) and later invented just about every important piece of earthmoving equipment there is. Not in advance as a researcher in a lab, but in the field when his back was against a wall and some inspired insight was necessary for his survival. (The book has the details.)

He built roads along the Amazon and a "Tree Stringer" to pop the trees out of his way, invented the "electric motor is the wheel" scheme, and literally hundreds of other clever mechanisms that remain the way it is done.

--------------------
Be seeing you,
Seer

Post Extras