Alphonse Couvreux (1820 – July 1890) was a French public works contractor, known for inventing the bucket chain excavator for which he filed a patent in May 1860. The bucket chain excavator was used to remove great amounts of earth for the construction of railroads and the

Suez Canal The Suez Canal (; , ') is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt, Indo-Mediterranean, connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea through the Isthmus of Suez and dividing Africa and Asia (and by extension, the Sinai Peninsula from the rest ...

. The first documented use of the machine on land was in 1859. Couvreux used some of his machines to excavate material for the Ardennes Railroad. About 8 million cubic yards of material was excavated from the Suez Canal by seven of his machines during a portion of its construction from 1863 to 1868. Some of Couvreux's machines were used in the early failed French attempt to build the

Panama Canal The Panama Canal () is an artificial waterway in Panama that connects the Caribbean Sea with the Pacific Ocean. It cuts across the narrowest point of the Isthmus of Panama, and is a Channel (geography), conduit for maritime trade between th ...

. The bucket chain excavator is still used in open pit mines and

quarries A quarry is a type of open-pit mine in which dimension stone, rock, construction aggregate, riprap, sand, gravel, or slate is excavated from the ground. The operation of quarries is regulated in some jurisdictions to manage their safet ...

. A scale model of one of his 1859 machines is located in the Museum of Arts and Trades in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

References

Other sources

* Brochure ''De l'inventeur à l'entrepreneur, histoire de brevets'',

Musée des Arts et Métiers The Musée des Arts et Métiers (; English: Museum of Arts and Crafts) is an industrial design museum in Paris that houses the collection of the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers, which was founded in 1794 as a repository for the preser ...

(Paris), 2008.
Bulletin de l’Association des anciens élèves de l’École supérieure de commerce de Paris.
N°90, July 1890, pp. 109–110. {{DEFAULTSORT:Couvreux, Alphonse 19th-century French inventors 1820 births 1890 deaths Suez Canal