Patten (shoe) Patten (shoe) Pattens are protective overshoes that were worn in Europe from the Middle Ages until the early 20th century. Pattens were worn outdoors over a normal shoe, had a wooden or later wood and metal sole, and were held in place by leather or cloth bands. Pattens functioned to elevate the foot above the mud and dirt (including human effluent and animal dung) of the street, in a period when road and urban paving was minimal. The word "patten" probably derives from the Old French "pate" meaning hoof or paw. Women continued to wear pattens in muddy conditions until
Steam shovel winch shovels. Many steam shovels remained at work on the railways of developing nations until diesel engines supplanted them. Most have since been scrapped. Large, multi-ton mining shovels still use the cable-lift shovel arrangement. In the 1950s and 1960s Marion Shovel built massive stripping shovels for coal operations in the Eastern US. Shovels of note were the Marion 360, the Marion 5900, and the largest shovel ever built, Marion 6360 "The Captain" – with a bucket – while Bucyrus constructed one of the most famous monsters: the Big Brutus, the largest still in existence. The "GEM of Egypt" (GEM standing