In the second half of the 18th century, the rapid development of iron and copper works, as well as gold and salt mining in Russia, created the necessary prerequisites for the organization of a domestic school to train mining and technical personnel, which was urgently needed by industry. The Mining Cadet Corps, now the Leningrad Mining Institute, established in St. Petersburg in 1773, became such a school - the oldest technical educational institution of our country. Over its 200-year history, the Mining Institute has educated a large army of talented scientists, production organizers, engineers, whose work contributed to progress in various branches of science and technology. A significant contribution was made by the Institute's students to the development and improvement of the open-pit mining method - a method that has always been of great importance, and in our time has become the most widespread in the mining industry of the country.

At many operating quarries non-metallic minerals are extracted only up to the level of underground water, and large reserves of raw materials lying below the aquifer level are considered off-balance sheet and are not developed. The depth of deposit development can be increased at the expense of watered reserves by using draglines, which provide excavation of blasted rock mass from under water from a great depth.