Photo gallery: Drilling and blasting through the years

By P&Q Staff| April 26, 2021

A close-up of a Robbins rotary drill shows (1) the sliding gear box, (2) the drill steel, (3) the revolving drill steel rack, (4) the hydraulic cylinders and (5) chain hoists that provide down pressure, (6) the hydraulic pistons, (7) jacks that level the unit for drilling and (8) the dust deflector. (Photo: Caterpillar)

Marion Power Shovel Co.’s 15-in. M-5 blasthole drill (pictured) and its companion model, M-4, were designed for fast drilling, quick hoist and short moving and setup time. (Photo: Marion Power)

This steel pull wrench quickly freed stuck drills thanks to a double-surface locking principle, which made it possible to pull and twist frozen steel loose at the same time. First available from Atlas Copco Eastern and Atlas Copco Pacific, the patented wrench could pay for itself the first time it was used to pull a steel free from a drift face or another drilling site. The wrench was designed for use with 7/8-in. hexagonal steels. (Photo: Atlas Copco Eastern)

The Ingersoll-Rand Drillmaster model pictured here was utilized in the mid-20th century at Elmhurst Chicago Stone Co. (Photo: P&Q Staff)

Workers at Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing Co. in Little Rock, Arkansas, operate Ingersoll Rand jackhammers. (Photo: P&Q Staff)

Taken in 1959, this photo shows Geotechnical Corp.’s Blastcorder monitoring dynamite blasting. The battery-powered unit had a fixed scale to immediately measure peak accelerations from 0 to 1.1 g’s. (Photo: Geotechnical Corp.)

Based on notes in P&Q’s archives, Ireco Chemicals’ Iremite was an aluminized slurry explosive that replaced dynamite in quarry, construction and underground mining. (Photo: Ireco Chemicals)

No date was left on this P&Q archive photo, but a written description notes that the man pictured stood at the base of the muck pile to offer perspective against the 60-ft.-high face. (Photo: P&Q Staff)