DeKALB – The DeKalb County Highway Department’s newest machine is not all that new.

County Engineer Nathan Schwartz unveiled a roughly 100-year-old road grader Wednesday that will be displayed outside his office along Barber Greene Road. The refurbished machine was donated to the county by Mayfield Township, which had the outdated grader in its inventory.

Schwartz called the antique machine a neat piece of history that illustrates how far road improvement technology has come over the years. The grader on display shaped gravel roads during a time when speed limits were between 15 and 30 mph. With only about an 8-foot blade, the grader would have been twice as slow and far less efficient than modern graders, Schwartz said.