But in less than 20 years more than half of the world's ocean-going cargo vessels may be too large to pass through the canal's locks.
Since then they have put in more than 2, 500 days of voluntary work, moving an estimated 300, 000 tonnes of mud from the route of the canal and its locks.
Sunday morning we entered the Pacific side of the Panama Canal at the Miraflores locks.
De Lesseps's insistence that the canal be built without locks had led engineers to try to cut directly through the rock to sea level.
Fresh from constructing a sea-level canal through the flat Egyptian sand, de Lesseps was determined, without having set foot in Panama and after only the vaguest of topographical studies, that his project through the mountainous central American isthmus would also be a sea-level canal, requiring no locks to cope with changes in altitude.
On January 17, 1900, the locks of the canal were opened and water began to flow from Lake Michigan downstream towards New Orleans.
FORBES: Currents Of The U.S. Economy Run In Chicago River's Twisted History
And its system of locks restricts the Panama canal to vessels of a given beam, known in shipping as Panamax.
You slide a personal listening device into your ear, press a button, and it expands and locks into the ear canal.
The Canal Corporation operates a series of dams and locks on the river to create navigable channels.
EU-financed study released this week, which argues that the canal authorities should build a series of new locks.
Plans to restore a derelict flight of locks on the Wilts and Berks Canal have been submitted to the council.
BBC: Restoration plan for derelict flight of locks in Wiltshire
He slowed, turning onto the smaller road running beside the canal, hearing the water rushing over the locks of the headworks.
The Panama Canal is expecting to double its traffic once the new locks are completed.
FORBES: The Port of New York and New Jersey, a Critical Hub of Global Commerce
The Pewsham Locks, near Chippenham, once raised the canal by 7m (25ft) but fell into disrepair when the canal was abandoned nearly a century ago.
BBC: Restoration plan for derelict flight of locks in Wiltshire
The key was not to try to dig a Suez-type of canal, a great sea-level trench from ocean to ocean, but to create a lock-and-lake canal, where the ships are lifted up by a series of locks to a man-made lake, and then they sail across that lake, and then they are set back down on the other side by another series of locks.
应用推荐