William Otis

William Smith Otis was a civil engineer of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who patented a crane-excavator for excavating and removing earth in 1839. His patent describes improvements in the apparatus and the method of excavating earth for building railroads, canals and other works, in which a scraper of ordinary construction is worked by a crane and takes the earth directly from the banks being cut. He stated that the crane shown in his drawing was the one he was then using in his own excavating work, and that its details could be varied without changing the result.