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By J. J. Jakosky

THE method of electrical mapping of oil structures to be described possesses certain limitations, as well as certain definite advantages. It, in common with other geophysical methods, is not a panacea for the solution of all subsurface geological problems. It operates on differences in electrical conductivity of the geological strata, whereas the other most-used methods operate on (1) differences in magnetic properties, (2) differences in gravimetric properties, or (3) differences in seismic properties. This modification of the resistivity method is therefore able to obtain subsurface information under conditions not favorable to the other methods mentioned. Where the other methods have been employed with ambiguous results it may act as a complementary method.

Jan 1, 1936

Jan 1, 1902

It is probably safe to say that, as the economic well-being of the mining industry goes, so goes the fortunes of mineral explorationists. And in 1977 the industry was not well at all. The year-long depression of the copper industry, marked by layoffs, temporary shutdowns, and mine closures, provided an appropriate background for the collapse of the nickel market, passage of a surface mining law that will affect the hard-rock industry in ways that are yet unclear, and the threat of operating under a new set of rules brought on by reform of the Mining Law of 1872.

Jan 5, 1978

By H. C. Meister

THE zinc-smelting industry of the United States has grown very rapidly in recent years and bids fair to outrival that of all other countries in the future. On account of the geographical situation of the chief ore-supplies, the industry may be divided into two main groups, the eastern and the western. The eastern and older group includes the works of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Virginia, which practically control their own ore-supply. The western group includes the works of Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Wisconsin and Indiana, which do not control their own ore-supply, but are compelled to buy the ore in the open market. It is for this reason that the western zinc-smelting industry has been undergoing continual changes since its inception 40 years ago. During the early discoveries of lead- and zinc-ore in the lead- and zinc-districts of Wisconsin and northern Illinois, the zinc-ore (sinithsonite or " bone " as the miner calls it) had no value and was considered waste; but later, when this ore was found in large quantities, it attracted the attention of metallurgists, which finally resulted, during the early sixties, in the building of the Matthiessen & Hegeler Zinc Works at LaSalle, Ill., the pioneer zinc-works of the West. A few years later, zinc-ore was discovered associated with the lead-ore in Jefferson county, southeastern Missouri, which started the industry at Carondelet or South St. Louis. Still later, the discoveries of zinc-ore in the lead-ore region, first' at Granby and then around Joplin, lead to the introduction of the industry in the southwest Missouri and Kansas districts. At first the development of the industry was slow, but it progressed steadily and it is now one of the leading metallurgical industries of the middle West.

Jan 1, 1905

By Scott Turner

GOLD AND SILVER, the monetary metals, have presented in the last year a striking contrast; gold has experienced unusual prosperity, while silver has been depressed more severely than ever before. Gold mining has been hailed as the only basic industry that is able to thrive on depression; the new gold produced is thought by many to be the most important material for the reconstruction of prosperity. Silver production, meanwhile, has been sinking to its level of 40 years ago, and its price to a level never before recorded. These factors have reduced the value of silver produced in 1932 to about the value of the average annual production more than a century ago, that of the decade 1801-1810. No other major commodity in world trade appears to have suffered a greater decline during the present depression.

Jan 1, 1933

By AIME AIME

WAR undoubtedly accelerates metallurgical progress, although its most obvious effect is a tremendous waste of materials. The necessity for restrictions in normal uses of metals results in a search for substitutes or for enhanced properties that will make a limited supply last longer. An insatiable demand for more metal to be produced more quickly favors trial of new processes, new metallurgical tools, and new methods of fabrication. Greatest advance is made, of course, in practical physical and process metallurgy. Theoretical or fundamental research necessarily must take a secondary position, and is so regarded in this review. It is not that developments in theoretical physical metallurgy are lacking entirely, but, following the same trend noted in other countries as they entered war activities, attention in the U.S.A. has been shifted strongly to those developments having an immediate practical application.

Jan 1, 1943

By CLARENCE WM. POY

THE most common difficulty faced by an engineer or mine operator when opening a new property in a new field is the lack of roads and of cheap transportation. This one item often swings the balance of success or failure in starting a project. In Alaska, as elsewhere, such problems are more or less serious. In the boom days around the Valdez district, as well as in other parts of this territory, freighting was accom¬plished by dog teams or horses, or even by men that were willing to put their shoulders into harness, because there were virtually no roads. More important, there was only one time when supplies could be transported, and that was when there was suffi¬cient snow on the ground following a heavy wind. Then, and only then, could one depend on the snow to support horses and sleighs, and be sure that the gulleys, streams, and crevices in the glaciers were filled with snow to avoid pitfalls. These methods were used when one had no roads, no streams in the summer to float a barge, or even a trail for a pack train. If the snow was deep and soft, trans

Jan 1, 1935

Discussion of the paper of R. J. COLONY, presented at the New York Meeting, February, 1921, and issued With MINING AND METALLURGY No. 169, January, 1921. R. J. COLONY (author's reply to discussion).-The work of Sosman and Merwin on the system lime-ferric oxide, mentioned by Mr. Rankin, was not overlooked. When studying portland cements and portland-cement clinkers petrographically, however, the lime-iron compound was difficult to correlate with the very definite dicalcium ferrite described by those investigators, which possesses such well-defined optical properties. In portland cements, the calcium ferrite (or ferrate?) is an indefinite, fuzzy, and generally amorphous, or apparently amorphous substance that is distributed interstitially with respect to the other grains, from which it was very difficult to derive any satisfactory results. For this reason, the writer, tentatively, chose to regard it as related to the aluminate, and assigned to it the composition 3CaO.Fe203, which may be incorrect, however, as Mr. Rankin suggests.

Jan 8, 1921

By J. T. Ryan

FIGURES for the first 11 months of 1935 indicate that the total coal production of the United States for 1935 will be approximately 416,000,000 tons, or almost identical with the production figures for 1934. Bituminous production will show a gain of about six million tons, and anthracite production a loss of about the same tonnage, compared with the previous year. This does not take into account so-called "bootleg" anthracite coal amounting to approximately 5,000,000 tons. Twenty-nine years ago, in 1906, the production of coal was almost identical with this year's production. At that time, 626,000 men were employed in producing this tonnage, which took a toll of 2138 lives from accidents. In 1935, approximately 540,000 men were required to produce the same tonnage with an estimated loss of 1155 lives. This shows definite safety advancement in the industry, but even so accidents are still costing an average of 3c. a ton more than they should.

Jan 1, 1936

By AIME AIME

A PERIOD of business depression and falling prices always raises questions as to the possible responsibility of the monetary or banking system. This is natural enough, for it is agreed that the supply of money or credit is a very important factor in modern business and in prices. However, it is far from being the only important factor. One of the chief merits of the gold standard is that under its workings the supply of currency and credit is regulated automatically to the masimun extent, in- stead of by the control of any arbitrary authority. The supply of new gold comes from the mines, and mining is free. It is distributed among the countries by the currents of trade and the play of economic forces, with the general result that the distribution tends to be in accordance with the economic development of the countries and their ability to use it or command it. Inasmuch as the accumulated stock of monetary gold is very large in comparison with the annual additions, the total avail- able supply changes but little from year to year, and it may be assumed that price-changes that are properly chargeable to gold will take place gradually rather than suddenly.

Jan 1, 1930

By Walter Renton, Ingalls

SEVERAL years ago I became interested in computing the historic lead production of the United States, and the mines, or mining districts whence derived. This led me subsequently to an examination of the recent records- of some of the American zinc-mining districts and of the great lead and zinc-mining districts in foreign countries. My present article thus will be to a large extent an addendum to my book, "World Survey of the Zinc Industry," which was published by the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America in 1931, and to which I shall refer hereinafter as Ingalls, op. cit. Throughout this article all expressions of tons mean the ton of 2000 lb. Where original data have been given in metric tons I have converted in many instances simply by multiplying by 1.1, and long tons by 1.12. I have not been fussy about digits and have rounded off many figures. These may explain differences between data herein and other data.

Jan 1, 1946

By Herbert Hoover

DURING the year, the' Institute has made the most remarkable growth in its history. Our actual increase in membership was 1816 and therefore was 80 per cent. larger than any previous year. Even without expectation of any abnormal growth, we should pass in the year 1921 the 10;000 mark. The causes of this increased growth are not far to seek.. They lie in the widening vision of the Institute's work, not only in its relation to' the profession but as an avenue of service to the nation as a whole. The Institute is today in the first rank of influence among public institutions in the country. During this year we have, for the first time in many years, had a ?deficit of some $3000 in our finances. The sum is not important, but it- does indicate the tendency of the times, and that is the high cost of living:' The increase in our expenses lay, to the largest degree, on the publishing side of the Institute's work. If we compare the year 1918, as a fairly repre¬sentative year, with that of 1920, we find that the costs of issuing the' Institute's publications, after deducting the income received from these publications, shows a .net increase of about $33,000. for the year. This has been to some degree due to the enlarged membership but to a large degree due to the cost of the paper and printing.

Jan 1, 1921

By CHARLES R. KETES

I. INTRODUCTORY. Lake Valley, New Mexico, has long been one of the most widely known mining districts of southwestern United States. For many years its silver-mines have been among the most famous of the country, visited by many mining men and geologists; yet little information regarding the origin of the ore-deposits and the influencing geologic conditions has found its way into print. With the recent revival of public attention, after a decade and a half of utter stagnation, to the mining of silver in the Southwest, special interest attaches to the genesis and geologic disposition of the ore-bodies which are so finely open to inspection in the Lake Valley district. Moreover, the local features here described are typical of the conditions existing over a much larger field. The fact that the ores are chiefly the chloride and the chloro-bromide of silver adds further interest. Data bearing upon the genesis of haloid ore-deposits are, at the present time, very much sought. Arid regions offer particularly favorable conditions for the formation of such ores. This New Mexican district appears to supply solutions to many problems concerning this class of ores, which have long vexed the student of ore-deposits. II. LOCATION AND HISTORY. The town of Lake Valley is situated in Sierra county, in the southwestern part of New Mexico, and 100 miles northwest of El Paso, as the crow flies.From a mining standpoint, the location of the place is itself suggestive, as it lies on the southeastern slope of the great quaquaversal arch of the Colorado plateau. The center of this vast dome is in north-central Arizona, and radii about 150 miles in length reach its foot in all directions. Around its basal margins runs the broad mineralized belt containing most of the great mines of the Southwest, which extends from south-central Colorado southward and southwestward through New Mexico, thence westward through Arizona, northwestward and northward through southeastern California and western Nevada, and, finally, eastward through Nevada and Utah into Colorado again. This great mineralized belt is important as geographically limiting profitable mining over the greater part of five States.

Jan 1, 1908

By Zay Jeffries

AN acute current shortage of copper, with the prospect that conditions may become worse, indicated by Office of Production Management information. Present estimates of copper requirement for defense indicate that nearly all the available metal will be required in the future for this purpose. Severe dislocations are, expected, but the objective is to distribute the copper available for civilian use in such a manner as to minimize these dislocations. The advisory committee on metals and minerals has been asked for a suggestions which may be helpful in meeting this situation.\

Jan 1, 1941

By JOHN JANNEY

STABILIZATION of the adjustment of normal consumption to normal production of world commodities is quite different from reducing production until visible surpluses are consumed. The first means restoration and maintenance of prosperity, the second means merely a temporary alleviation of a condition with the prime cause remaining uncorrected. Overproduction of foodstuffs in some sections of the world while millions starve in other sections represents not so much overproduction of foodstuffs as mal-distribution of foodstuffs. The flour mills of Washington and Oregon normally ship quantities of flour to China. Now, the wheat that would make this flour goes East instead of West. Is this overproduction, or is there something wrong that calls for study, analysis and correction? Can the plan used by the ostrich of hiding its head in. the sand get us by this present world tragedy, or must the challenge to solve this problem be met, constructively? Can we not make out of this breakdown in the world's economic system an opportunity? And use it as the stimulus for remedying the basic cause of the trouble and not content ourselves with devising temporary expedients that aim at remedying this or that of the obvious conditions, in themselves not causes at all but rather the evidence of causes, or that are the symptoms of the real trouble.

Jan 1, 1931

By A. U. Seybolt, R. E. Honnemon

THE purpose of this communication is to present activity data of nickel in the Ni-A1 binary system that was obtained for oxidation studies in this system. This data has been calculated from previous aluminum activity data at 1000°C1,2 by two types of Gibbs-Duhem integrations. These results should be of particular current interest to oxidation studies of aluminide coated nickel-base superalloys3 as well as other problems. The aluminum activity of Steiner and Komarek1 is plotted in Fig. 1 as a function of composition in Ni-A1 alloys at 1000°C. The dashed parts of the aluminum curves represent our approximate extrapolations from the directly measured regions. In the terminal solution regions (a and L phases) standard parabolic solution functions of the following form are assumed: where i is the component subscript, Ki is a constant at a fixed temperature, and xi is the atom fraction. The resultant nickel activity curve at 1000° C from the Gibbs-Duhem integration4 of the aluminum data is shown in Fig. 1. The solubility ranges of the phases present in the Ni-A1 binary at 1000°C are also denoted at the bottom of Fig. 1. Corresponding values of the nickel activity, aNi and yNi, are listed in Table I at useful compositional intervals. including phase boundary values. The aNi and yNi data listed in Table I are subject to the uncertainties present in the experimental aluminum activity data1 and to deviations from parabolic solution behavior in the terminal solutions. The errors introduced into aNi and yNi due to the parabolic solution assumption are expected to be relatively small (<20 pct of the values given) in all the phases except the liquid phase. Some deviation from parabolic solution behavior in the liquid phase is indicated

Jan 1, 1970

By D. B. RUSHhIORE

I. INTRODUCTION. OF primary importance in mine-installations is the hoist, which has a very direct bearing on the successful operation of a mine. Conditions vary greatly with different mines, and especially in different localities. Such factors as depth, incline, the number of levels, permissible or desirable speeds, conditions of ore, etc., are always more or less special in each case. Veins of ore are never exactly duplicated, and the nature of the ground through which shafts are sunk may considerably modify permissible values. As mining-laws are made by the different States, they necessarily vary somewhat, and, even when not fully observed, they introduce factors which qualify the conditions of hoisting men and ore. The amount of timbering required is often of importance as relating to hoisting-conditions. Methods of loading ore affect the time required, as also does the question of the use of cars or skips. Safety-precautions must be very carefully considered, and the number of men in each mine, the number of compartments, and often the method of removing water from the mine, must. have careful consideration. While a general discussion of the subject. of hoisting is possible, most cases are entirely special, and can be considered only in connection with the peculiar conditions pertaining to that particular installation. The cost of installation of the hoisting-plant may be an appreciable amount, while the cost of raising the ore may be but a small part of the total operating-charge. In many cases, however, the output of the mine is limited by the capacity of the hoist, and the latter thus becomes of the first importance. * Presented also, by mutual agreement, at the meeting of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, New York, N. Y., Mar. 11, 1910.

May 1, 1910

By H. W. Gillett

UNLIKE most previous Howe lecturers, I had not the good fortune to be associated with Henry Marion Howe, nor to be directly one of his students. Yet, through his writings, he has been my teacher, as he has of all American metallurgists. Instructive as his writings are-I use the present tense because Howe thought so keenly and reasoned so surely, seeing clearly, as if by intuition, what was hazy to lesser minds, that his writings are still vital-it is not, those books and papers, nor even the minds he trained in his classes, that were his most outstanding service. It was the spirit of Howe in his: approach to the problems of metallurgy, his broad-mindedness and fair-ness, his recognition of the need for theories and hypotheses to explain metallurgical phenomena, his willingness to use them as servants, as well as his questioning attitude-his refusal to accept them as masters-that comprise his greatest service. This most thoroughly warrants the honor the Institute pays each year to his memory. These traits I so respect and honor in any man that I glory in this opportunity to do reverence to him in whom they were so notably united.

Jan 1, 1939

By AIME AIME

TRANSFER to the Bureau of Mines of the responsibility for conservation and production of helium, and announcement that a proposal has been made to the President for commercial operation of the Los Angeles has attracted new attention to the helium program of the Government. The matter is one in which mining engineers, and the mining industry in general, have a peculiar interest. Helium is a byproduct of the petroleum and natural gas industry. It is found in certain of the natural gases which have themselves been discovered, in the main, in the search for oil. If it is to be produced on a large scale, the conservation and development of the fields will necessarily be done by the men of the oil and gas industry. There is no known or expected source of supply of quantities of commercial importance save in the natural gas fields. Not all gas wells supply helium and none of them supply it in important percentages. If it were necessary to prospect a field, develop it, lay pipe lines and build production plants for the helium alone, the cost would be prohibitive. On that basis helium would necessarily be restricted to essential war uses, where cost is subordinate to need. As a byproduct of the natural gas in certain, at least, of the fields in the United States there is distinct reason for anticipating that it may be produced in amounts and at a cost that will permit its regular use in commercial airships.

Jan 1, 1925

By W. Lawrence Austin

Jan 1, 1884