Bulldozer history
History News Network have published a new article from me, dealing with the history of the bulldozer, a theme I have been researching and writing about for some time. Why the bulldozer, of all things? This is why (from the conclusion of the article):
[The bulldozer] is a machine that deals with fundamentals: the earth, transformation, creation, destruction. It buries the past while it builds the future, demolishing in order to construct, leveling the ground and starting anew from a cleared and emptied landscape – it is the year-zero machine. Celebrated as an icon of social progress or despised as a symbol of destructive exploitation, hymned as a machine of liberation or feared as a tool of repression, the bulldozer has reshaped cultural perceptions as it has transformed urban and rural landscapes. To follow in its tracks is to understand the history of the modern age.
You can read the entire article, ‘The bulldozer: one of the overlooked wonders of technology’, here. I hope you’ll soon be able to explore the history of the bulldozer at even greater length, in one of the must-read books of 2008.
