The Creusot steam hammer was a giant steam hammer built in 1877 by Schneider and Co. in the French industrial town of Le Creusot. With the ability to deliver a blow of up to 100 tons, the Creusot hammer was the most powerful in the world until 1891, when the Bethlehem Iron Company of the United States purchased patent rights from Schneider and built a steam hammer of almost identical design but capable of delivering a 125 ton blow.
The Creusot hammer still exists, although it is no longer operational, and is a tourist attraction in the town of Le Creusot where it was built. With few remaining rivals, the hammer today is once again the largest of its kind in the world.
The Creusot steam hammer was named a Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 1981.
Read more about Creusot Steam Hammer: Origins, Description, Redundancy, Tourist Attraction, Footnotes
Famous quotes containing the words steam and/or hammer:
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—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“He asked water, and she gave him milk; she brought forth butter in
a lordly dish.
She put her hand to the nail, and her right hand to the workmen’s
hammer; and with the hammer she smote Sis’e-ra, she smote off his
head, when she had pierced and stricken through his temples.”
—Bible: Hebrew Judges (l. V, 25–26)