Modern Marvels: Lube Job

From a prehistoric sharpened digging stick to today’s $15-million monster machines, our journey for the ultimate shovel begins in California’s borax mines, where the P&H 4100 uses advanced electronics, brute strength, and savvy operators to excavate 170-ton chunks in a single scoop. We travel back to 1835, when William Otis set off an American digging frenzy with his patented steam shovel. And at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, we kick the legs of NASA’s latest Mars Lander: Phoenix. This stationary probe has a robotic arm with a shovel scoop designed to dig into the soil, locate ice, and analyze its properties. Back on Earth, the Hitachi Corporation’s 200-ton hydraulic humanitarian shovel is designed to locate and explode landmines in Third-World countries.