Construction
The Panama Canal was started by a french man named De Lesseps in 1880I. He and about 25,000 workers died after four years working on the Panama Canal. In 1903 the United States bought rights to the Panama Canal and in 1904 new builders arrived and were able to learn from De Lesseps mistakes and were able to build on his foundation of the previous engineering. The builders dug ditches to drain any remaining water and soon they installed a pure water supply and a modern system of sewage disposal. During the process of building the Panama Canal the workers had to cut through the mountain ridge at culebra. In addition, they had to build a huge dam at Gatun and Miraflores to trap the Rio charges and form and artificial lake. They used thousands of steam shovel and dynamite while constructing the Panama Canal.
Although there are 12 sets of locks total, there are only six massive pairs of locks that ships use for transit. The Panama Canal lock is a lock system that lifts a ship up 85 feet to the main elevation of the Panama Canal and down again. The total length of each of the lock structure is 3 kilometers( about 2 miles). Each lock may be filled or emptied in less than 10 minutes, and each pair of lock gates takes two minutes to open.