When Buckets were Buckets and Picks were (really) Picks

JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post

Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose as Ms. Stein has said, though that doesn't necessarily apply to buckets and picks.  Once upon a time there was a solid and universal need for many varieties of each one of these (exclusive of the not-elusive Ms. Hyacinth Bucket-pronounced-bouquet as the Major would say),and we get a taste for them in these pages of advertisements.  

The first is for Hudson's hardware ("steel trucks, points, crossings, portable railway, steel buckets") and so on, presumably mostly for mining, and it appeared in The Engineer for July 4, 1884:

The ad has a superb aroma of engineering heavy finery.  

The second is from the Engineering and Mining Journal, July 8, 1876, and the ad trumpets a "perfect, solid cast metal pick" for all sorts of segmented work.  Different jobs, different surfaces, different environments, different people--different picks for the job.