An interesting conversion of a John Deere 450 into a small yarder by the Forest Service around 1980: https://www.fs.fed.us/ne/newtown_square/publications/research_papers/pdfs/scanned/OCR/ne_rp495.pdf
That was a lot of work for what is basically a baby tong thrower. I guess in the early 80's hydraulic excavators were still new. I wonder when the first tong thrower was built?
Jewell built the first one I know of in 1990.
I assume you are talking hydraulic tong thrower.... Any shovel I ever worked around was capable of tong throwing. Under an old Washington trakloader, picking up right of way, we had a set of 6' tongs. And man could he toss them accurately.
Yessir, hydraulic tong tosser.