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By R. W. Raymond

In a paper on the Divining-Rod (Transactions, xi., 411), presented at the Boston meting, in February, 1883,I suggested, among other signs of which the skilled prospector might consciously or unconsciously avail himself in the search for springs of water or mineral deposits, the presence of particular grasses or shrubs, and the general appearance of the flora. There are not wanting, in the literature of our art, indications that greater attention was paid to such signs in ancient days than at present. It is the tendency of a scientific age to ignore, or regard as superstitious, what cannot be classified or explained. But the acute though unscientific observation of earlier times often, doubtless, accumulated facts which it would be worth our while to re-examine. It is highly probable that the mining prospectors of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, to go no further back, were close students of nature, and knew, though they could not explain, and, for reasons of private gain, would not communicate, many curious and significant facts. We can generalize better than they could; but for that very reason we are, perhaps, their inferiors in observation. They let nothing pass, because all things were equally significant to them. We take wider views, and miss more. And, no doubt, there still exists among practical millers, prospectors,, hunters, Indians, etc., an unwritten.

Jan 1, 1887

By B. DE MARE

THE No. 6 open-hearth furnace at the plant of the Worth Steel Co., Claymont, Del., is the first to be rebuilt according to the Kuehn system. This as well as the other five furnaces at Claymont, has a nominal capacity of 75 tons, but the actual charge is about 242,000 lb. No hot metal being available, the pig-iron is charged cold. Oil of low grade with an asphalt base is used as fuel. These two items have to be kept in mind when discussing the actual fuel consumption. Careful records have been kept covering a five weeks run and the following is a brief summary of them The time required to heat the furnace preparatory to charging from the time a wood fire was started until charging commenced was 36 hours. This, I understand, is much less than with furnaces of standard design. The draft of the furnace, as shown by a gage in the stack-flue, is 1.25 in. The maximum draft with new checkers on former runs was 1.50 in., this draft gradu¬ally decreasing as the checkers closed up. Both of the first helpers claim the present draft is all they need for the proper working of the furnace, and, as with the Kuehn regenerators the draft remains practically the same from beginning to end of a run, this is satisfactory.

Jan 1, 1929

By Henry Howland

INTRODUCTION DURING the last decade no topic has created more interest or received more thought among blast-furnace men than colic. One reason for this is, undoubtedly, the remarkable increase in the use of byproduct coke. Formerly our coke was made at a distance from the furnaces and by a distinct organization. There was little cooperation or development possible under these conditions. Today the situation is greatly changed. Much of our coke is made by the organization operating the furnaces and the coke oven is operated with the primary object of obtaining the best results in the blast furnace. The effect of changing the method of coke manufacture, even in some minor detail, is often felt almost immediately at the blast furnace. There naturally results one of the most valuable assets of the byproduct coke oven, -i.e., the possibility of increased blast-furnace efficiency clue to close observance and correct operation of the ovens. The results are evident, but it often is difficult correctly to account for them. In attacking the solution of a problem of as much importance as why one coke is better than another, there are facts which should be kept clearly in mind The author hopes, in this paper, to bring out some points relative to the use of carbon in the blast furnace which will be of value in solving this question.

Jan 3, 1916

By R. B. Moore

IN 1914 the writer and K. L. Kithil announced, through Bulletin 70 of the U. S. Bureau of Mines, that the United States possessed the largest deposits of radium-bearing ore in the world. At that time a small amount of this ore was being, mined and shipped to Europe, and one company was preparing to start the extraction and recovery of radium in this country. The importance of our carnotite deposits in Colorado and Utah up to the publication of Bulletin 70 was not, however, appreciated by anyone.. At that time the total supply of radium in the world was about 10 g., calculated as element, and when I estimated that at least 100 g. of radium element, and probably 200 g., would be produced from our carnotite deposits, there was a considerable amount of skepticism. Up to the present time almost 200 g. have come from this ore, and some writers put this figure a little higher. Uranium ore was found in the copper mines of the Union Minière du Haut-Katanga at Luiswishi in 1913. Later discoveries were made at other places in the Belgian Congo, and the Katanga ores now represent the largest supply of radium-bearing ore in the world. In fact, since 1923 very little radium has been produced from American carnotite, the Katanga ore representing practically the world's supply of. radium since that date.

Jan 1, 1930

In the late 19th century Fremont Pass was only a gateway to Leadville, Colo., 12 miles to the north. Some of the silver, lead, and zinc won from this famous camp crossed the Continental Divide at Climax, passing by the huge outcrop of molybdenum on Bartlett Mountain. This element, relatively un- known in the world of commerce, was then nothing more than a joke to play on greenhorn prospectors. Even 30 or 40 years later, after the demand for metals created by World War I had forced temporary use of molybdenum as an alternate for tungsten in tool steels, the Bartlett Mountain outcrop once again became merely a curiosity. With the persistent efforts of Brainerd Phillipson, for years the president of Climax and almost the only employe, use of molybdenum gradually began to grow, first in tool steel and later in the alloy steels required by the growing automotive industry. Mr. Phillipson was first an engineer and second a salesman. The combination of these two qualities is the key to the story, not only of Climax sales but also of the growth of molybdenum from an object of idle curiosity to the point where it is today, along with chromium and nickel, one of the most versatile alloying elements in the iron and steel industries and increasingly important in chemistry.

Aug 1, 1955

By C. K. Leith

The ores of the region are contained in rocks of pre-Cambrian age, which, for most of the country up to recent years, have usually been referred to as “crystalline schists” or “crystalline complex;” and regarded principally as a metamorphosed basement-unit upon which the sedimentary rocks, beginning with the Paleozoic, were laid down. In the Lake Superior region this pre-Cambrian complex presents an' unusual variety of rocks with determinable relations. It has been possible, with the large expenditures which the magnitude of the iron-mining industry warrants, to work out their stratigraphy to a larger degree than bas been possible in almost any other area of pre-Cambrian rocks. [The portion here omitted contains descriptions of the Archean, Algonkian, and Keweenawan rocks of the several districts, their structure, distribution, correlation, and succession. Table I. and the geological map of the Lake Superior region belong to this portion, but are here reproduced on account of their value as guides to the readers of the rest of the paper.] The simplest and clearest conception of the pre-ambrian succession for the Lake Superior region may perhaps be obtained by thinking of it as primarily divided into six series-Keweenawan, Upper Huronian, Middle Huronian, Lower Huronian, Keewatin, and Laurentian-all but the last two separated by unconformities of varying and disputed relative im-

Jan 1, 1913

By K. S. TWITCHEEL

THE different lines leading out from the vocation of a mining engineer are,' perhaps, the most' varied of all the professions. The expedition sent by Charles R. Crane of New York 'as a gift to the Imam Yahia, king of the Yemen, Arabia, was probably unique. Mr. Crane made a visit, in January,1927, to the Imam Yahia at Sanaa, capital of the Yemen. He was received with the utmost cordiality and respect, as his friend- . ship for the ,Arab world is famous; He was 'greatly impressed by the desire of the Imam to develop his country. The Imam stated that he had heard that there were minerals in his country and that he would like to secure engineers to advise him about them and other natural resources.. This seemed such a practical idea, and so greatly appealed to Mr. crane, that he offered to furnish an engineering 'expedition. Naturally the Imam gratefully accepted. This expedition was to study (as far as possible in 'the limited time) the natural resources of the ,Yemen, advise the Imam of what these consisted, and make suggestions regarding the most practical methods for their development. As agriculture is always such a fundamental part of a country's wealth, I first went to Indio, California, to study water-well drilling and the date industry, and eventually arrived at Hodeidah, the principal Yemen seaport, on Oct. 21, 1927.

Jan 1, 1929

By A. F. Melcher

THE present paper is a progress report. on an investigation of the physical factors of oil and gas and especially of their sands, I such as-pore space, size of pores or permeability, retentivity, viscosity of the oil, temperature, pressure, thickness and area of the pay sand, water relations, and capillarity. The purpose is to determine as many of these physical factors as possible, and to ascertain the relations existing, directly or indirectly, between these physical factors and the production of oil and gas. As yet only pore space2 and size of grains of pay sands have, been investigated, although an apparatus has been designed to determine the permeability of a sand to oil, water, or gas under definite drops of pressure between the entrance face and exit face of the sample. Messrs. E. W. Shaw, R. Van A. Mills, D. Dale Condit, G. B. Richardson, G. C. Matson, and C. H. Wegemann collected the samples upon which the physical determinations were made. Acknowledgment is made to my colleagues of the United States Geological Survey for many suggestions and criticisms; to Mr. Mills for the production data given of the oil wells from which some of the samples were collected; to Mr. A. W. McCoy of the Empire Gas and Fuel Co., Bartlesville, Okla., for many ideas.

Jan 4, 1920

By Gunnar Thaning, Goran Mathisson

The iron ores mined by LKAB in the north of Sweden have excellent beneficiation properties. This gives LKAB a favorable position as regards the production of low silica pellets for direct reduction. LKAB has concentrated on developing and marketing grades of pellets for the Midrex-Purofer-HyL process group, i. e., such direct reduction processes carried out in a shaft furnace or a static bed using reformed natural gas as a reducing agent. The paper deals with properties and quality demands of iron ore pellets for such processes. Matters such as the effect of the residual magnetite in the fired pellets on the degree of metallization, the amount and composition of the slag phase in the pellets, the mechanism of the disintegration during reduction, the state of swelling of the pellets during the conditions prevailing in these processes, the importance of the porosity, the improvement of the reducibility and lowering of the sticking tendency of the pellets by small additions of suitable additives, and the influence of the pellet size are discussed. A special test procedure for direct reduction pellets has been elaborated by LKAB. Thus, three metallurgical properties are routinely determined separately, namely reducibility, reduction strength, and sticking. The test methods are described. Finally the present and future LKAB pellets for direct reduction are presented with respect to chemical analyses and metallurgical properties.

Jan 1, 1980

By David Swan

No mystery shrouds the discovery of chromium. The indefatigable French chemist Vauquelin, in reporting his discovery of this chemical element to 1'Institut National in 1798, concluded his discourse with the statement: "I place before the eyes of the Institute a small quantity of chromium and several of its most re- markable combinations." Working with the so-called "red lead of Siberia, Vauquelin not only prepared numerous chemical compounds of the new metal, but he reduced the oxide to the metallic state. These chemical compounds possessed a variety of remarkably distinctive colors; so, acceding to suggestion, Vauquelin named the new element chrome (chromium), a derivative of the Greek word chroma, meaning color. Siberian "red lead" (crocoite) was not plentiful; however, it was not long before Vauquelin's prediction was realized that the chemical compounds of chromium would become useful in the arts when sources of chromium became more readily available. Although chrome-iron ore (chromite) became obtainable in France, the United States and elsewhere during the early part of the nineteenth century, it is interesting to note that from 1828 to about 1860, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and others of the eastern United States furnished almost the entire chrome-ore requirements of the world. Several countries each in turn have since dominated for certain periods the supply of chromite. In recent years, the largest tonnages have come

Jan 1, 1953

By AIME AIME

OUT of the fabulous iron ranges of Michigan?s Upper Peninsula since Pearl Harbor have come go to the steel mills to become tanks, guns, ships, and other weapons for a United Nations' victory. But the contributions to the war effort, as far as Michigan's iron country is concerned, do not stop there. The same men who mine iron ore deep inside the earth also are "mining" on top of the ground, gleaning a harvest of scrap iron and steel that is writing a big chapter in the War Production Board's salvage program. At virtually every mine over an area of a hundred square miles, everyone from the top mine official and straw boss to the man in the dippings is scrap conscious. They know the importance of the ore they mine but they are equally familiar with the importance of iron and steel scrap in war production. The successful job they are doing in salvage is a tribute to the entire Upper Michigan mining industry and to the man who marshaled them into action-John M. Bush, chief of the land department for the Cleveland- Cliffs Iron Co. at Negaunee, and for ten years an A.I.M.E. member. Also, this job should be an inspiration to 611 mining. metallurgical, and petroleum communities as to the latent possibilities of organized scrap recovery.

Jan 1, 1943

By C. R. Van Hise

[Concluding Contribution of Prof. Van Hise to the Discussion of his Paper, and Others on the Same General Subject, presented at the Washington Meeting, February, 1900 (see Ram., xxx., 27, 177, 323, 424, 578) ; also of the contributions of Vogt, De Launay, Beck, Lindgren, Kemp, Rickard, Bain, Keyes, Collins and Adams, presented at the Richmond Meeting, February, 1901, and to be printed in the present volume.] In June, 1900, shortly after my paper was published in the Fransactions, I made a briefer statement* before the Western Society of Engineers covering the same ground, which, in certain respects, is somewhat of an improvement. For instance, instead of using the terms descending and ascending &th reference to the waters resulting in the two concentrations, my modified statement is as follows: " The first concentration of many ore-deposits is the work of a relatively deep water-circulation, while the reconcentration is the result of reactions upon an earlier concentration through the agency of a relatively shallow water-circulation. Commonly the deep water-circulation is lacking in free oxygen, and contains reducing agents, and the shallow water contains free oxygen. The deep water is therefore a reducing, and the shallow water an oxidizing agent."† Of the papers upon ore-deposits which, in vol. xxx. of the Fransactions, follow my own, or which were presented at the Richmond meeting, a considerable number are wholly con-

Jan 1, 1902

By E. Gybbon Spilsbury

In the course of the persistent and rapid advance of our country towards the goal she has set for herself, of commercial and manufacturing supremacy, there stand out certain periods or cycles of prosperity or depression, succeeding one another with a comparative regularity as to their ultimate trend, but of varying lengths and intensities. I might compare this course to that of a railroad between two points at different levels, with intervening mountain ranges and valleys, the up-grades climbing towards the final upper terminal of prosperity, while the down-grades retard the ascent, and tend to return to the valleys below. Just at the present time we are evidently at the bottom of one of these valleys, and, before starting to climb the next divide, it may be prudent for us to look into the condition of our rolling-stock, and especially into that of our brakes, and see what the experience of our downward journey has taught us, and whether we are properly equipped for the new upward advance which now lies before us. Probably no previous period of the same duration has produced in all branches of mining and metallurgy improvements SO many and so various as have the last ten or twelve years. Not that they have brought forth any such startling and revo-

Jan 1, 1898

[ASSETS CAPITAL ASSETS: Equity in United Engineering Society's Land and Buildings $486,792.79 Library 40,000.00 $526,792.79 INVESTMENTS: Jas. Douglas Fund-Schedule #2 $ 99,966.40 Life Membership Fund-Schedule #3 9,415.63 R. W. Hunt Medal Fund-Schedule #4 7,489.09 116,871.12 INVENTORIES: Paper Account 305.10] [ ]

Jan 1, 1925

By Philip D. Pearson

Competition is the problem and modernization is the solution in today's underground iron operations on the Lake Superior Range. Profound changes in the iron ore picture during recent years have prompted correspondingly great changes in the economic position of the Lake Superior underground mines. To meet the ever growing competition from other lower cost iron sources, underground operators are becoming increasingly aware that the newest advancements in mining technology must be incorporated in their operations. UNDERGROUND POSITION TODAY The extraction of iron ore by underground methods has been going on for many decades in the Lake Superior region, starting in 1872 on the Menominee Range. The number of mines has changed gradually over the years as new ones were opened and old ones were exhausted, but in recent years, the most drastic change occurred from 1960 to 1961. In 1960, there were 31 underground mines operating in Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin, but at one period in 1961 only 20 were operating (Table I). In western Ontario so far there has been only some temporary curtailment of operations. Of the 11 U.S. mines which ceased operations in 1961, some may he closed only temporarily, but some will remain closed for our lifetime, at 'east, unless there is a tremendous reversal of the present trend in the iron ore market

Jan 3, 1962

By Carl Gatlin, S. Srini-Vasan

It is shown thar k k ratios cornputed on the as.sutnption that the average sandstone reservoir has a pore-size distribution characrerized by a linear 1/P saturatioN plo are in good agreewient with correspotlding k,,/k,, ratios obfairzed by Wahl, Mul-/ins and Elfrink by correlatiotz of field measurements. Methods of calculating relative permeability data have recently been reviewed and extended.' It was shown that for sandstone reservoirs where ' is approximately a linear function of effective saturation (as suggested first by Corey') it is possible to express relative permeabilities in very simple terms. For systems wetted by connate water and producing oil and gas (gas saturation growing at the expense of oil) the expression for the The accuracy of Eq. I has been frequently confirmed in our laboratories; because of its simplicity we make routine use of it in the analytical solution of proble~ns in reservoir engineering. Nevertheless, comparisons of the k,,,/k,, ratios yielded by Eq. 1 with appropriate reservoir data have been few. The publica- tion by Wahl, Mullins and ElfrinkV of an empirical equation for k,,/k,, ratios is thus of interest since this equation is specificalljl stated to be Vased on the correlation of field measurements made on sandstone reservoirs. Not surprisingly these authors found that it was necessary to

By W. R. Johnson

In the spring of 1935 the writers undertook to compare the geomagnetic and direct-current earth-resistivity methods of tracing a concealed dike along its strike. As far as they are aware no such direct test has been attempted.# The area surveyed lies along United States Highway number 15 about one and one-half miles east of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and northeast of Bolin Creek (Fig, 1). To the south of the highway is the flood plain of Bolin Crook, and to the north is a hill that rises almost to the elevation of Chapel Hill. A diabase dike, which strikes slightly west of north, out-crops in a. gully just south of the highway. Southward it has been covered by alluvium but northward outcrops again on the southeastern slope of the hill north of the highway. South of the highway the country rock is Triassic shale and sandstone, the northern limit of which is slightly north of the road. On the Geological Map of the United States I the pre-Triassic formations are shown as lower Glenarm and assigned a pre-Cambrian age. Since the ago of the Glenarm has been called into question in Pennsylvania 2, the writers prefer not to commit themselves as to the ago of these rocks further than to say that they are definitely pre-Triassic.

Jan 1, 1937

By Bernard Kopelman, C. C. Gregg

THE reduction of tungstic oxide to tungsten metal powder by hydrogen is a process by which one might expect the resultant metal powder to be porous. In- [ ] deed, sponge iron, prepared by reduction of the oxide in a reducing gas, is generally accepted as quite porous, with pores large enough to be seen readily under the optical microscope at relatively low magnifications. However, any pores that may exist in tungsten metal powder are not resolved by the optical microscope, and apparently, not even by the electron microscope. Fig I shows commercial tungsten powder magnified at 10,000X by the electron microscope,1 both etched and unetched. In an earlier paper by one of the authors,2 the existence of pores in tungsten powder [ ] was required to explain adequately the particle size changes occurring during the reduction of tungstic oxide. The inability to detect these pores under the electron microscope at 10,000 X implies that these pores are of a size of 100 A units or less. (This in itself is by no means proof that pores above 100 A would not exist, since polishing effects on the specimen might smear up holes of such small magnitude). If, then, these pores are less than 100 A, and of the order of molecular size, then the density of the metal powder should be

Jan 1, 1948

By Raymond H. Young, Paul Sennett

INTRODUCTION Kaolin clay, consisting largely of the mineral kaolinite, is widely used as a white pigment. In the United States, for instance, pigment kaolin production was nearly 6,000,000 tons in 1976 (1). Production for this year should be significantly above this level. Current prices for kaolinite 'pigments range from about $20.00/ ton to$260.00/tony,depending on the amount of processing needed to make the final product. Although much of this pigment kaolinite is used as an inert filler where product specifications are not very rigid, a large quantity of kaolinite is converted to products where very restrictive specifications exist. These specifications set severe limits on such properties as viscosity in a water suspension, particle size distribution, color, and brightness. This discussion will concentrate on methods available to improve the color and brightness of pigment kaolin and will review the advantages and problems associated with these various methods. The term "brightness" refers to the reflectance of the pigment to blue light (2). Since even the brightest commercial kaolins have a somewhat yellowish color, the blue reflectance (or brightness) is a reasonably good measure of their nearness to a perfectly white material. I KAOLINITE STRUCTURE AND SOURCES The mineral kaolinite is an aluminum silicate and can be represented by the formula (OH) 8Si4A14010. The formula is frequently written

Jan 1, 1979

By John W. Trammell, Chester O. Ensign

Efficient mining of copper ore at the White Pine mine in Michigan's Upper Peninsula is partially dependent on the rather unique problem of predicting variations and rock types in a barren stratum called the upper sandstone. The pronounced effect which this formation has on the local mining techniques is reflected by the necessity of deciding whether to mine the sandstone along with ore-bearing rock, thus diluting overall ore grade, or, alternatively, leaving the sandstone behind to form the mine roof. THE OREBODY AND MINING TYPES In the mine, the cupriferous zone of the Nonesuch shale is divided into three major portions (Fig. I). Lying conformably on top of the Copper Harbor formation (or "lower sandstone") is the lower part of the orebody, the parting shale. The parting shale is overlain by the upper sandstone. On top of the upper sandstone, the basal portion (8 ft) of the upper shale is quite similar to the parting shale. Both the upper shale and parting shale are divided into a number of smaller stratigraphic units, each having a characteristic copper content, as shown by the histogram of Fig. 1. Other authors have dealt in detail with the stratigraphy and mineralogy of the orebody, so it will suffice here to call attention to the low copper content of the upper sandstone.

Jan 12, 1964