Description
It is 160 feet (49 m) high and weighs 11 million pounds (4,989,516 kg). The bucket holds 90 cubic yards (69 m3) or 150 tons (136 metric tonnes). Maximum speed is 0.22 MPH (6 metres per minute). It cost $6.5 million in 1962 when it was shipped in 150 railroad cars to be assembled in Kansas. It only was used until 1974 when it no longer became economical to mine coal at the site. At that time it was considered too big to move and so was left in place.
Big Brutus, while not the largest electric shovel ever built, is the largest electric shovel still in existence. The Captain, at 28 million pounds, was the largest shovel and one of the two largest land-based mobile machines ever built. It was scrapped in 1992.
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Famous quotes containing the word description:
“To give an accurate description of what has never occurred is not merely the proper occupation of the historian, but the inalienable privilege of any man of parts and culture.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“Do not require a description of the countries towards which you sail. The description does not describe them to you, and to- morrow you arrive there, and know them by inhabiting them.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Why does philosophy use concepts and why does faith use symbols if both try to express the same ultimate? The answer, of course, is that the relation to the ultimate is not the same in each case. The philosophical relation is in principle a detached description of the basic structure in which the ultimate manifests itself. The relation of faith is in principle an involved expression of concern about the meaning of the ultimate for the faithful.”
—Paul Tillich (1886–1965)