About the show
From the humble ancient shovel to the towering cranes and massive bulldozers of today’s construction sites, Earthmovers is an enlightening rumble through the history of heavy equipment. The massive building projects of today would be impossible without the dreamers and innovators who invented the famous “Caterpillar” and more.
Presented by the History Channel on its long-running series Modern Marvels, this show about Earthmovers rests on the remarkable fact that human beings have mechanistically moved more soil over the 20th and early 21st centuries than in any prior era. The program offers a detailed and systematic examination of the inventions used to create those shifts, from hand tools to bulldozers, and biographically profiles some of the historical figures who catalyzed America’s construction boom, such as John Deere, Jerome Case, and Caterpillar founders Benjamin Holt and Daniel Best. The documentary features extensive footage of these pioneers and their groundbreaking inventions and follows the development of their marvelous tools to the present day. We get an up-close look at some of the wor1d’s most powerful machines in action, from deep mine diggers to the oversized equipment used at urban construction sites that can fill hardened executives with child-like wonder. Yet the environmental dark side of this progress is revealed as well.
