William Deidrick was an American inventor from

Selma, California Selma is a city in Fresno County, California. The population was 23,319 at the 2010 United States Census, 2010 census, up from 19,240 at the 2000 United States Census, 2000 census. Selma is located southeast of Fresno, California, Fresno, at an ...

. He was a co-inventor of the Fresno Scraper, the machine that became the basis of most modern earth-moving equipment. On April 17, 1883, Deidrick received U.S. Patent 275,893 for his horse-drawn scraper, which was a variation on the Buck Scraper, invented by

James Porteous James Porteous (1848–1922) was the Scottish-American inventor of the Fresno scraper. James Porteous was born in Haddington, East Lothian, Scotland. His father, William Porteous, had been a wheelwright and blacksmith who built and repaire ...

Fresno, California Fresno () is a major city in the San Joaquin Valley of California, United States. It is the county seat of Fresno County and the largest city in the greater Central Valley region. It covers about and had a population of 542,107 in 2020, makin ...

. Porteous, originally a manufacturer of wagons, purchased Deidrick's patent, and also one held jointly by

Frank Dusy Frank Dusy (December 17, 1837 – November 9, 1898) was an early business leader of Selma, California and a co-inventor of the Fresno Scraper, the basis of most modern earth-moving machinery. On June 16, 1885, Dusy and his partner Abijah McCall we ...

and

Abijah McCall Abijah McCall was a co-inventor of the Fresno Scraper, a horse-drawn (and later, tractor-drawn) earth-moving machine upon which modern road- and canal-building equipment is based. Along with his partner Frank Dusy, McCall devised an improvement on ...

as he perfected the machine, an important tool in the building of the

Panama Canal The Panama Canal ( es, Canal de Panamá, link=no) is an artificial waterway in Panama that connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean and divides North and South America. The canal cuts across the Isthmus of Panama and is a conduit ...

, among many other uses.

References

Year of birth missing Year of death missing 19th-century American inventors People from Selma, California {{US-inventor-stub