History of Pile Driving: 

Pile driving has existed for thousands of years.  From the dawn of human history, driven piles were used to raise a shelter above the water or land.  By using driven piles in this way, early humans could also protect themselves and their food from animals — and other humans.
In the Roman world, driven piles were commonly used to provide a stable foundation in the various soils around the Mediterranean Sea.  The Romans — accomplished planners of infrastructure — also used driven piles to support military and civil works.  In fact, one of the oldest bridges in Rome was named the “Pons Sublicius,” which means the bridge of piles. At the end of the Roman Republic, one of the most ambitious and complex bridges was built by Julius Caesar’s army as they crossed the Rhine River.  This bridge was supported by a series of piles and designed to not only be stable, but to withstand attack from opposing armies.
During the Roman era, piles were made of wood.  These piles were driven by drop hammers that were supported by small wooden rigs.  Wooden piles would continue to be used until the end of the nineteenth century.
During this same time period, the Chinese and other Asian builders used an innovative method of driving piles.  A stone block would be lifted by ropes, which were stretched taught by humans and arranged in a star pattern around the pile head. As the ropes were pulled and stretched, the stone block would be flipped up and then guided down to strike a blow on the pile head.
 
 
In Venice, a city built on the marsh delta of the Po River, early Italians used timber piles to support the buildings.  These piles were driven through the soft mud of the marsh onto a layer of boulders below. These driven piles have been exceptionally well-preserved; in 1902, when the bell tower of St. Mark’s fell, the timber piles were in such good condition that they were used to support the reconstructed tower.  The bell tower and its supporting tiles were built in 900 A.D.
 
In the nineteenth century, a number of advances allowed for greater use of driven piles. First, steam replaced human power to turn the winches which drove the piles. The development of the steam hammer, use of concrete piles, and the creation of the first dynamic pile driving formula permitted even more efficient installation of piles.
In 1845, Scottish inventor James Naysmith developed a steam hammer that was used to drive piles at the Royal dockyards in Devonport, England. This discovery was possible through the widespread use of steam power, which was used in both Great Britain and Russia for steam engines. Naysmith’s steam hammer was originally designed to be used as a forge hammer for steel production. Its use as a pile driving mechanism allowed piles to be driven at a rate of one in four and a half minutes.  At the time, human-powered pile driving could only install one pile in more than twelve hours.
GeoQuip provided an HPSI 500 Vibratory Hammer outfitted with caisson beam and clamps to Lane Construction on their I-264/Witchduck Road Interchange Project to drive 36” diameter pipe pile. Photo credit: GeoQuip
Steam hammers came into use in the United states after 1875.  In 1887, Vulcan Iron Works developed the first “#1” hammer.  This hammer and ones that followed became the most popular types of steam hammers in the United States.  In Europe, steam hammers were manufactured by companies such as BSP, Menck + Hambrock, and Nilens.
These early steam hammers relied solely on the drop of the ram for the energy used to drive the pile.  In the twentieth century, steam hammers with a downward assist were developed.  Steam (and later compressed air) was used in these hammers to accelerate the ram downward with more force than gravity alone would provide.  There were two types of these kinds of hammers.  Compound hammers used air or steam on the downstroke, which double or differential acting hammers used the air or steam at full pressure to accelerate the ram downward.