Conveyers of various kinds have been in use since 250 B.C.E., the earliest example being the Archimedes screw used to raise water. The bucket conveyor, a simple chain of buckets used to move bulk materials, became an important technological innovation in the burgeoning mining industry of the fifteenth century.
Conveyor belts were a development of these simple machines. Early versions in the 1700s were nothing more than leather or canvas belts over flat wooden beds, used mostly for transporting sacks of grain and in the mining industry. But over the next couple of hundred years they developed, rubber replacing leather, canvas as the belt material and mechanization being introduced.
In 1913 Henry Ford installed conveyor belts in his factory in Michigan to create a production line. Combined with other factory manufacturing techniques and the principle of uniformity and interchangeability of parts, Ford revolutionized the motor industry and effectively created the standard for industry mass production. The idea of having a single or series of conveyors with your workers each contributing one small part of the end product at fixed points along the line is one that was quickly adopted by many factories. The conveyor belt quickly became used for transporting heavy and light objects in various stages of production in factories throughout the developed world.
Conveyor belts are still used in factories and in the mining industry; the longest conveyor belt in the world is over sixty miles long and is used in phosphate mining in the Western Sahara.
