Shovel - Wikipedia

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shovel

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A shovel is a tool for digging, lifting, and moving bulk materials, such as soil, coal, gravel, snow, sand, or
ore. Shovels are used extensively in agriculture, construction, and gardening.
Most shovels are hand tools consisting of a broad blade fixed to a medium-length handle. Shovel blades are
usually made of sheet steel or hard plastics and are very strong. Shovel handles are usually made of wood
(especially specific varieties such as 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 riveted 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-produced.
The term shovel is also applied to larger excavating machines called power shovels, which are designed for the
same purpose, namely, digging, lifting, and moving material. Modern power shovels are the descendants of
steam shovels. Loaders and excavators (such as backhoes) perform very similar work, etically speaking, but they
are not classified as shovels emically.
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 multitaskers. Examples are given under "Types".

In neolithic times and earlier a large animal's scapula (shoulder blade) was often used as a crude shovel or
spade.[1] It is via this connection between shoulder blades and digging blades that the words spatula and spade
both have etymologic connection with scapulas.
Manual shoveling (often in combination with picking) was the chief means of excavation in construction
until mechanization via steam shovels and later hydraulic equipment (excavators such as backhoes and
loaders) gradually replaced most manual shoveling. The same is also true of the history of mining and quarrying
and of bulk materials handling in industries such as steelmaking and stevedoring. Railroad cars and cargo holds
containing ore, coal, gravel, sand, or grains were often loaded and unloaded this way. These industries did not
always rely exclusively on such work, but such work was a 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 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 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 electrically actuated equipment such as conveyors, augers, and
elevators.
Given the central importance and cost of manual labour in industry in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the
[applied] "science of shoveling" was something of great interest to developers of scientific management such as
Frederick Winslow Taylor.[2] 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

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