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By H. E. Stauss, E. I. Salkovitz, F. W. von Batchelder

EXISTING information regarding the structure of a spherulite in nodular cast iron is based on optical studies. According to these data, a nodule consists of an aggregate of graphite crystallites radiating from the center, with the closely packed basal planes at right angles to the radii. The c axes lie along the radii. This view faces some uncertainty in the fact that the c axis does not represent the accepted direction of fastest growth in graphite. To supplement the optical information, X-ray studies have now been made. The principle used was to screen the nodule in greater part from the X-ray beam and expose only a minor cap. As successively larger portions of the nodule were introduced into the X-ray beam, any differences in the X-ray patterns could be observed. Such photographs have been taken with chromium radiation and a Laue camera. The graphite nodule itself, about 0.010 to 0.025 in. in diam, was mounted with vaseline on a micrometer screw for control of the linear motion. The nodule rotated about 45" each time that it was translated linearly. The nodules were obtained from magnesium-treated hypereutectic iron by electrolytic solution of the iron in hydrochloric acid. In Fig. la is shown the pattern of the thinnest cap examined. In Fig. lb is shown the pattern of the same nodule moved 0.003 in. farther into the X-ray beam, and rotated 45" at the same time. Figs, la and lb indicate incomplete circles for graphite (the two outer circles arise from graphite) with the side arcs much weaker than the top and bottom ones. The arcs obtained are themselves not continuous in intensity but vary with maxima of intensity some 15" and 30" apart. The structure of the nodule that would give rise to such a pattern can be explained as follows. Basically the nodule consisted of small crystallites. The discontinuous character of the diffraction rings demonstrates that the nodule was not composed of randomly oriented crystallites. The strong vertical reflections and the weak lateral reflections show that the reflecting planes were roughly normal to the radii. The absence of sharp reflection spots suggests that the nodule did not contain large crystals. The sharpness of the diffraction rings in their radial direction shows that the variations in intensity along the arcs were not the result of line broadening resulting from extremely small crystals. In the diffraction patterns two rings corresponding to graphite were found. The third and inner ring in the figures originated in the vaseline. The graphite rings correspond to the a and ß lines reflected from the basal planes, showing that the radii of the nodules are the [0001] direction normal to the basal planes of graphite. The picture of the structure that is formed is, therefore, one of aggregates of crystallites. Within each aggregate the c axes of the crystallites tend to align themselves in the radial direction of the nodule, although these axes deviate somewhat in direction by a continuous variation of angle. Correspondingly the basal planes of the graphite crystallites are generally normal to the radii. It is a pleasure to acknowledge the assistance of M. C. Bloom and R. P. Dunphy of this laboratory.

Jan 1, 1952

By Robert Glass Cleland

THE DEVELOPMENT of the Phelps Dodge copper and railroad interests began in one era of the company's history and continued unbroken into the next. Yet the two eras themselves were strikingly dissimilar and represented marked differences in the company's activities, corporate structure, and personnel. From its organization in 1834 almost to the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, the partnership known as Phelps Dodge was directed, managed, and controlled by the family dynasty established by Anson Greene Phelps. The last two directing partners of this three-generation-old regime assumed control of the company's affairs in 1879 when the economic revolution that followed the Civil War was well under way.' They lived in an age of gigantic undertakings, gigantic enterprises, gigantic combinations, gi- .

Jan 1, 1952

By Chas. Kohl

ABOUT 1929 an engineer was engaged to organize a Safety Department, lay out an educational program, and achieve a reduction in accident frequency. Due to the large number of employees, about 12,000, and the distances between the various properties, it was a big undertaking. Most of the workmen are from the Sierra and for generations have been agricultural people, with little conception of modern tools and machinery, and to a large degree are illiterate. However, gratifying results have been obtained, as evidenced by the accident frequency curve during the sixteen-year period. Safety offices have been established in each of the six major properties, staffed by men who devote their entire efforts to inspections of working conditions and equipment, instructions as to safe methods, and investigations of accidents. The Corporation is a member of the Inter-American Safety Council, receiving their publications and literature, which serve to keep us up to date and informed on modern methods. Dissemination of this material is accomplished chiefly through word-of-mouth and bulletin boards. When it is found that the accident rate is increasing in a certain occupation, as for instance underground haulage or mine hoisting, the operators so engaged are assembled and given renewed instructions on the safety code pertaining to their work. Inter-camp competitions in accident avoidance are being conducted, with annual awards for that unit having the lowest severity rate for the year.

Jan 1, 1945

By E. A. Holbrook

IN my thirty years of educational work in the mineral industries and other engineering fields, this past year has been the most unusual and difficult one. Contact with educators from other schools leads to the conclusion that the same situation is countrywide. The first of our difficulties came from the shortsighted policy of the Selective Service in taking out of the colleges, continuously, all engineering students as soon as they had reached their eighteenth birthday. England, Canada, and Russia, too, even in the midst of their critical war situations, had the good sense to keep their young engineering brains in college, for they realized the vital necessity of a steady flow of engineering graduates into the war industries and into the postwar peace industries. As a result of the policy of our Government, our engineering schools were left with only a handful of students who had been rejected for military service. Our colleges, faced with the prospect of several years without students and without income, hastened to give leave of absence to many of their competent teachers who quickly were taken into industry and in many instances are now being retained there at higher salaries than colleges are accustomed or able to pay their teaching personnel. We are finding it most difficult to induce these men to return to their former engineering teaching work. In my judgment, it will take us three or four years to restore our engineering departments to their former level in quality of instruction.

Jan 1, 1946

By William R. Chedsey

IN the last two years the E.C.P.D. committees having to do with the inspection of engineering schools for possible accrediting have been concerned with the engineering content of some of the mineral industries courses. Originally the discussion arose with regard to engineering geology, or geological engineering, afterward broadening to metallurgical engineering, ceramic engineering, agricultural engineering, and other branches not pertinent to this discussion. Some members of visiting committees took the attitude that they probably would have to accredit these types of training as included in the engineering group if they met the average standard set by the mining schools, though they questioned -whether they were really engineering.

Jan 1, 1939

Jan 1, 1920

By AIME AIME

THE career of Erie V. Daveler, reelected director of the Institute last February, illustrates, among other things, the value of technical schooling and experience as a mining engineer as preparation for executive and administrative work. For twenty years after graduating in the mining course at the University of California, in 1907, he was actively engaged in operating mines and mills in the West. After two years cyaniding silver ores at Tonopah, Nev., he joined the staff of the Utah Copper Co. at Bingham, his first assignment being research in ore dressing. Since that time he has been associated continuously with companies allied with Utah Copper, through D. C. tackling who dominated the affairs of the

Jan 1, 1937

By AIME AIME

ANDREW FLETCHER, newly elected Treasurer and Director, has spent his entire mining career in the employ of the St. Joseph Lead Co. and brings to the Institute Board a career rich in financial experience and varied in interest and accomplishment. "Drew" Fletcher was born in New York City on Feb. 6, 1895. After graduating from the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale in 1916 as a mechanical engineer, he became a shipyard mechanic in Wilmington, Del. The next thirteen years saw. him gradually enlarging his responsibilities until he ultimately became the head of the W. & A. Fletcher Co., in Hoboken, N. J., ship repairers. In 1929 his program for merging the Fletcher plant with five other New York shipyards was finally consummated in the formation of the United Dry Docks, Inc., which subsequently was purchased by Bethlehem Steel, with the result that today the old Fletcher yard and organization has been expanded into one of the finest ship repair units in the United States.

Jan 1, 1944

By Edwin Ludlow

To THE members of the American Institute of Mining and? Metallurgical Engineers who were fortunate enough to be able to attend the Fiftieth Anniversary at Wilkes-Barre, it was brought home that commercial anthracite requires not only expensive mining but that the milling or preparation of it is also a costly operation, requiring very large capital expenditures and high maintenance and labor costs. The great trouble that coal men meet in discussions of coal problems today is the difficulty the average coal user, especially in the East, finds in distinguishing between anthracite and bituminous coals. They are two entirely separate problems and yet the people who are burning coal complain bitterly of the high cost of anthracite and quote the figures furnished in regard to the prices of bituminous coal and feel that the anthracite operators are making an excessive profit, without realizing the enormous difference in the cost of production in the two fields. The great difference that can be marked is that in this year of industrial depression the prices of anthracite have been not only maintained but have increased during the summer, while the price of bituminous coal has been continually dropping since the first of the year, and yet the same law of supply and demand governs both anthracite and bituminous. In order to understand the situation the two problems must be considered from their separate points of view.

Jan 1, 1921

By Louis Doremus Huntoon

HAVE been asked many times by financial men in New York as to the best way of securing an interest or control of a gold mine in Canada. It must be understood at the start that prospectors and early owners will not sell a 100 per cent interest. They not only retain from 10 to 25 per cent interest, depending upon the work done, but usually demand more or less cash to reimburse them for expenses. These conditions are accepted by Canadian capital and operating mines looking for new properties. The winter is not a hindrance to work but may be of great advantage. The overburden of soil and gravel is generally wet and most difficult to trench in the summer time especially if at all deep. The snow also permits easy transportation of freight. Properties distant from rail transport all of their machinery and supplies during the winter months.

Jan 1, 1933

Jan 1, 1934

By AIME AIME

THIS year's Chairman of the Mineral industry Education Division is, like his predecessors, no novice in that field, having been in 1928 Chairman of the Engineering Education Committee which labored so well that it was enlarged into a Division of the Institute's activities . For almost a quarter of a century lie has been a dean in mining and engineering schools, with considerable experience before that as a teacher. A native-born New Englander (June 23, 1881), he naturally went to Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he received the Bachelor's degree in mining in 1904. Just why a Fitchburg. Massachusetts boy yearned to he a mining engineer he has never explained, but why should any boy ever have to explain why lie wants t? be a mining engineer? Like the old rhyme about the reasons why a man should drink, "any other reason why" is adequate..

Jan 1, 1945

By AIME AIME

WHEN a local man has attained high position in business and civic affairs at home, his fellow citizens feel elated if his attainments are given recognition in the form of election to office in an organization of national scope. Eugene Ainsworth White, a new Director of the Institute, is one of the must prominent citizens of Tacoma, where for the past thirteen years he has managed the Tacoma Smelter of the American Smelting and Refining Co. A list of the civic duties he has carried with distinction would be a long one; for recent years it would show that he has been chairman of the Community Chest, vice-president of the Chamber of Commerce. and a member of the Pierce County Taxation Bureau.

Jan 1, 1945

By L. E. Garner

Aggregate resources should be considered primary factors in urban development. Resource planning is essential because land values, previous construction, or zoning restrictions often preempt exploitation of aggregate deposits within an urban area. Sequential land use practices allow development of area prior to urban development population and aggregate consumption trends in Austin, TX, indicate that substantial quantities of reserves will be lost to future development. Aggregate materials are present in nearby areas. However, a comparison of transportation and reclamation costs indicates that reclaiming land after mineral extraction can be significantly cheaper than transporting materials longer distances.

Jan 1, 1982

Jan 1, 1935

Now producing 35,000 tpd of coal from a deposit whose estimated reserves total 1.1 billion t, the Navajo mine of Utah International Inc. near Farmington, N. M., is the largest open-pit coal operation in the US. The history of this mine began in 1953 when, foreseeing the growing need for electrical power in the southwest, Utah International obtained a prospecting permit from the Navajo tribe. The lease, now covering 31,000 acres of the 12-million acre New Mexico-Utah-Arizona Navajo Indian reservation, was entered in 1957; in the next 3 years, Utah International negotiated with the State of New Mexico for water rights on the San Juan River, and finalized an agreement with the Arizona Public Service Co. to provide coal for the proposed Four Corners power-generating plant near Farmington.

Jan 10, 1974

HOW the Engineers' Memorial clock and carillon at Louvain has impressed the people of that city is indicated by the following letter sent by the Secretary of the University of Louvain to the Secretary of the United Engineering Society. We are still full of the memories of that splendid July 4, when we came into such .delightful contact with our American friends and more specially with the representation of the engineering societies of the United States. It was a great joy for all the members of the University to see those, American friends who have given to us such a splendid memorial in honor of- the brave men who fell in the Great War.

Jan 1, 1928

By H. L. Tedrow

FACED with a scarcity of labor in its operations at Alma, Colo., the London Mines and Milling Co. has been employing women for several months in its sorting and crushing plant. The results so far obtained indicate that women can be used successfully and to good advantage on a number of various jobs around the surface plant of an ordinary mine. Eight women are now employed as sorters to pick waste out of the ore as it passes by them on a sorting belt. After a short period of breaking in they have become adept at their work and are doing better work than that formerly done by the class of labor obtainable. They are continually warned and instructed, particularly from the standpoint of safety and their physical strength.

Jan 1, 1942

By Smith, George Otis

ENGINEERING is in essence quantitative, and the engineer must deal with exact figures when he plans and, constructs. Engineering truths are not best expressed by adjectives, yet my wish, today, is not to attempt a quantitative measure of the dominant position of the mineral industry of the United States in the existing scheme of material things, but rather to seek a clualitative appraisal of what mining and metallurgical engineers are doing to promote and make secure our , national progress. Statistics help when we wish to gage material prosperity, but they fail when we desire to determine what share the engineers have in adding to the happiness and welfare of our people

Jan 1, 1928

By Joseph E. Pogue

THE period of new oil discoveries in Illinois began in February 1937, when The Pure Oil Co. found the Clay City field the forerunner of a number of limestone pools. The importance of the area was emphasized greatly in December of the same year with the discovery of excellent sand production by The Carter Oil Co. at Louden and in June, 1938, with the discovery by The Texas Co. of the Salem field producing from two sands and one lime- stone horizon. By September, 1939, new discoveries in Illinois were estimated to have added, under prevailing production practices, some 500,000,000 barrels to the crude oil reserves of the United States and to have produced to that date some 63,000,000 barrels with daily production passing the 300,000-barrel mark by Sept. 1.

Jan 1, 1939