While wandering through graveyards to research stories, I came across the graves of these two men who must have had a passion for their work, so much so that this is the way their families chose to remember them.
One has a model of a T9 Caterpillar on his grave, while the other has a genuine bulldozer track.
There was a time in Namibian history from the late-40s to the 70s when much of the infrastructure of the country was built, including roads, dams and cutlines for fences, and there was a demand for heavy duty machinery, like bulldozers.
The graves piqued my interest and on further research I discovered that Benjamin Holt had invented a steam tractor in 1890. He designed the first track-type tractor in 1904 when he used a pair of tracks on the rear wheels of a Holt steam tractor to gain more traction in soft soil. The name ‘Caterpillar’ was coined when in 1905 on a field test the company photographer exclaimed that the tractor crawled like a caterpillar. The Caterpillar tractor was born.
(Reference: www.caterpillar.com)
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