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By Paul F. Kerr, Donald M. Hausen

Fine colloidal gold near Carlin, Nevada is disseminated in leached carbonate strata of the Roberts Mountains Formation in the Lynn "window" of the Roberts Mountains thrust fault. The ore body is generally stratiform and is more or less conformable to altered beds near the top of the formation, underlying Devonian limestones. Two sequences of mineralization are recognized: ( 1) an earlier base metal-barite assemblage related to early Cretaceous intrusives (121 ± 5 m.y.), and (2) a later low temperature Au-As-Hg-Sb assemblage of near surface emplacement. The earlier sequence consisting of sparse galena and sphalerite in barite with anomalous amounts of zinc, lead, nickel and copper, associated with dikes of dacitic composition, is of little economic importance. The later sequence of gold, realgar, cinnabar, and stibnite associated with extensive silicification and argillic alteration of limestone beds, has resulted in important deposits of gold. Argillic alteration of hydrothermally leached carbonate strata has provided the environment in which the most prominent gold deposition took place. Carbonate minerals in the limestone host rock have been replaced by microcrystalline quartz and chalcedony to form stratiform silica masses and recrystallized lenses of euhedral quartz. Zones of porous silicification are light gray to white, elliptical in shape, and more or less follow bedding. Silicification is bordered by argillic alteration and pyritization. Deposition of gold usually lies in a zonal pattern that encircles chimney areas of silicification.

Jan 1, 1968

By Eckley B. Coxe

The subject of this paper will be treated as briefly as possible under the following heads : I. The latest designs of some of the machinery used at these collieries in the preparation of coal. 11. The means employed for elevating, conveying and transporting the coal and slate in and about the breaker. 111. The means employed for raising the coal from the mines to the top of the breaker. IV. The iron breaker as a structure. V. The preparation of the coal as effected in the iron breaker. A key to the plates and the letters and numbers designating different parts, will be found at the end of the paper. I. Preparing Coal. Anthracite coal as it comes from the mines is not marketable. The "run of mine" cannot, as in the case of bituminous coal, be sold. Anthracite, being very compact and practically free from volatile combustible matter, burns only at the surface, and it is, therefore, deemed important to have the lumps as nearly of a uniform size as possible, so that between them a large amount of surface will remain exposed to the action of the air without checking the draught too much, or allowing enough air to pass to cool the coal below the ignition-point, In other words, if the pieces of coal of the size of a chestnut and smaller are mixed with lumps of the size of an egg they fill the air-passages and prevent a free draught. It has long been recognized, therefore, that one of the most important points in preparation is to have a uniform sizing, and also to make as large a number of different sizes as can be produced without too

Jan 1, 1891

By Hugh P. Nicholson

IN view of the many articles that have been written on the proper classification of mining systems without so far having produced any particular tangible results it might seem that the subject is hopeless of solution. I do not believe that is so, and my intention in contributing the following outline is to present a slightly different viewpoint. Too much attention is often focused on unnecessary details and not enough on general principles. Too much attention and emphasis is often given to the system employed at one particular mine or in one particular district. In addition, names that are entirely misleading are applied to mining systems, and their adoption by the coming generation perpetuates a condition that needs clarification badly. The following classification is the result of several years of practical experience in mining and also several years' practice in teaching the same subject. It therefore represents a broad picture of the entire field of mining systems from the viewpoint of the miner as well as the teacher. It seems that the difficulty in the past has been in reconciling these two viewpoints. The need of such a reconciliation requires no explanation.

Jan 1, 1934

By Frederick G. Coqueron, Joseph E. Pogue

FOR a number of years, the Department of Petroleum Economics of The Chase National Bank has been conducting a study of the capital employed in the petroleum industry. The technique followed is that of combining and summarizing the available financial and operating data for a group of thirty representative oil companies, doing about two thirds of the domestic business of the entire industry. This paper presents the results of the findings for the year 1943, and supplements the survey, "Sources, Disposition, and Characteristics of the Capital Employed by Thirty Oil Companies During the Nine-Year Period, 1934-1942," presented before the Petroleum Division of the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers on Feb. 24, 1944, and also published as a pamphlet by The Chase National Bank.

Jan 1, 1944

By T. A. Rickard

An educated man is distinguished neither by his clothes nor by his knowledge; he is replarkable not for the things he says, but for the way he says them. You cannot even stand with him under an archway in the rain without finding him out. He may talk only of the weather. His words and his phrases alike may be simple. -at distinguishes him is the arrange- ment of his words; however desultory his talk, it will be method- ical; he has habituated himself to foreseeing the part to be played by each word he uses and the place to be taken by each sentence he utters. On the other hand, the uneducated man, though shrewd and well-informed, will relate facts and events as they recur to him, generally in disorder; in his effort to recollect and in his attempt to rectify forgetfulness he will pause irregularly, filling the intervals with meaningless phrases, such as "and then ", "and: so ", or 'said he to me", "said I to him"; and even the contipuous parts of his story will be told confusedly-because he has not learned the proper use of words.* My own experience as an editor of technical manuscripts has taught me that the misuse of 'that' and 'which' is a fruitful cause of obscurity and confusion. The relative pronouns have distinct functions, and no writer can express himself clearly until he has learned to discriminate between these I functions. For example:

Jan 1, 1931

By E. W. Davis

IF the tonnage of merchantable iron ore remaining in the Lake Superior district is divided by the average of the annual shipments for the past 20 years, it will be found that this ore supply will be exhausted in approximately 35 years. This computed exhaustion period would be an indication of the future activities of the iron-mining industry if it were not for the fact that merchantable ore is being manufactured from low-grade ore, of which there is an almost inexhaustible supply in the Lake Superior district. It is true that at present only the simplest of these low-grade ores are being concentrated to any considerable extent, but progress is being made with the treatment of the more complex ores, and now, in addition to 20 washing plants on the Mesabi Range, three plants are equipped with jigs for the treatment of ore that cannot be concentrated simply by washing. The latest addition to the ore-treating plants of the Mesabi Range is a magnetic roasting and concentration plant at Cooley, Minn., in which ore that cannot be concentrated either by washing or by jigging is roasted to the magnetic state and concentrated on magnetic separators. This plant is beginning its third season of operation, and while it is too soon to make definite predictions, there are strong indica-tions that this new process may make commercially possible the manu-facture of high-grade, merchantable iron ore from large quantities of low-grade ore now considered worthless. After the iron oxide contained in an ore has been converted to mag-netite, almost any desired grade of concentrate can be produced, using magnetic-concentration equipment of the types now in general use for the concentration of the natural magnetites of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The conversion of hematite (Fe2O3) to magnetite (Fe3O4) is easily accomplished by heating the ore to a dull red tempera-ture in a reducing atmosphere. The reaction is slightly endothermic, and while it requires 200 B.t.u. to heat to 900° F. one pound of hematite ore containing 45 per cent Fe, it requires only 100 B.t.u. to convert the oxide into magnetite. In the laboratory, using small quantities of ore, this conversion is very simple, but large furnaces suitable for commercial

Jan 1, 1936

By W. G. Sinclair

THE North Texas district presented in this paper includes the counties of Archer, Baylor, Clay, Cooke, Foard, Hardeman, Jack, Knox, Montague, Wichita, Wilbarger and Young. It corresponds with the Texas Railroad Commission's district No. 9. Table I conforms with the nomenclature of pools as designated by the Commission. Most of the oil and gas produced in this region, generally referred to as the Red River uplift, comes from the Pennsylvanian strata. In recent years, however, increasing amounts are being developed in both the Mississippian and Ordovician.

Jan 1, 1946

By W. G. Frailing, W. P. Sims

The Lakeview Pool of Kern County, California, was discovered in 1910 with the drilling of Lakeview No. 1 which blew out and produced an estimated 8,250,000 bbl of oil in 544 days of uncontrolled flow. The well has since been known as the Lakeview Gusher. Full exploitation of the pool did not take place until about 25 years later. A total of 112 producing wells were completed in the Lakeview sand through April 30, 1949. As of that date, about 30 per cent of the total wells drilled were still producing, with an average pool production rate of approximately 2000 bbl per day. The cumulative oil production was about 41 million bbl of oil, or 55.3 per cent of the tank oil originally in place. The pool is bordered on its down-structure side by a body of inactive edgewater and water production where present has been principally the result of coning. Since the depletion of the greater portion of the gas energy by the Lake-view Gusher, the pool has operated under gravity drive. Relatively high angle dips, good permeabilities and favorable fluid characteristics have made gravity drainage particularly effective. Since January, 1942, the oil recovery -has been relatively constant at about 53,000 bbl per ft drop in fluid level. Correlations between the volume of reservoir space drained and the cumulative oil produced indicate that an ultimate recovery of 63.3 per cent of the tank oil originally in place is attainable. INTRODUCTION The Lakeview Pool is an outstanding example of gravity drainage. It is one of many productive reservoirs of the Midway-Sunset Field, and is located in Kern County, approximately five miles southeast of Taft and two miles north of Maricopa, California. Its position rel- ative to surrounding pools and to the Thirty-Five anticline is shown on Fig. 1. The northern portion of the pool lies in sections 32 and 33, Township 32 South, Range 24 East, Mt. Diablo Base and Meridian, while the southern portion lies in sections 25, 26, 35 and 36, Township 12 North, Range 24 West, San Bernardino Base and Meridian. As no two sections bear the same number, they will hereafter be referred to by section number alone. The purpose of this paper is to review the performance of the Lakeview Pool in an effort to evaluate the effectiveness of gravity drive as a recovery mechanism. REGIONAL STRATIGRAPHY AND STRUCTURE The oustanding structural feature is this area is the Thirty-Five anticline, the axis of which plunges South 75" East through the center of Section 35. As shown on Fig. 2, the following zones are oil and gas bearing in the Thirty-Five anticline area: Pleistocene Basal Tulare Tar Sands Pliocene San Joaquin Mya Sands Top Oil or Scalez Zone Etchegoin Kinsey Sand Wilhelm Zone Gusher Sand Calitroleum Sand Miocene Reef Ridge Lakeview Sand Sub-Lakeview Miocene Sands Monarch Sands or fractured shale equivalent Maricopa Webster Sand or fractured shale equivalent Fractured Shale-Uvigerina Zone C Obispo Sand and fractured shale equivalent Pacific Shale Zone The productive interval of the Lakeview Pool is limited to Upper Miocene and Lower Pliocene deposition. In this general area, the most prevalent type of accumulation results from stratigraphic traps or permeability pinchouts. As is the case of the Lakeview Pool, strati-graphic traps resulting from angular unconformities are present. The structure within the Miocene does not parallel that of the Etchegoin (Pliocene), as the Miocene beds were folded, and in places faulted, and subjected to erosion prior to Pliocene deposition. The Lakeview horizon consists of truncated sands which occur on the northeast flank of the Thirty-Five anticline. The direction of strike is west and northwesterly through sections 25 and 36 and continues northwesterly through sections 26 and 33, to the approximate center of section 32. At this point the strike swings to the northeast and the horizon re-enters section 33. in the northwest corner. The change in strike in section 32 affords synclinal accumulation at that point. The Lake-view sand is truncated updip by the Etchegoin overlap. To the southeast, the sand shales out, while to the northwest, the productive interval appears to be limited by a combination of stratigraphic pinchout and permeability barrier. Structurally, the Lakeview reservoir presents three areas of interest, as shown on Fig. 3. Area I in section 32 is a region in which a productive Sub-Lakeview Miocene sand is present. It occurs from 10 feet to 30 feet below the base of the Lakeview sand and attains a maximum thickness of 25 feet in Well No. 21, section 32. The producing characteristics of the Sub-Lakeview Miocene sand differ radically from those of the Lakeview sand. Water production at high structural locations and abnormally high fluid levels indicate that there was no communication with the Lakeview sand. Wells in Area I penetrated this sand and produced it in conjunction with the Lakeview sand. In Area 11, the Lakeview sand is a

Jan 1, 1950

By C. A. Stetefeldt

FoR the convenience of those who do not care to enter into the details of this long essay, I begin with a summary of the most important results it presents. The extraction of silver by the lixiviation-process from ores which have been subjected to a chloridizing-roasting, is based upon the fact that silver chloride is easily soluble in solutions of sodium or calcium hyposulphite, and that silver is precipitated from such solutions by an alkaline sulphide, with regeneration of the hyposulphite salts. In case the ore contains lead a large portion of the latter is and dissolved, lead sulphate being soluble in hyposulphite solutions. If, at the same time, copper is present, the sulphides precipitated from the solution, contain silver, copper, and lead, a combination of metals not desirable for subsequent treatment. Mr. E. H. Russell, of Park City, Utah, is the inventor and the patentee in the United States and several foreign countries of a new lixiviation-process, based upon the chemical facts discussed in this paper. Mr. Russell has discovered that lead can be completely separated from a sodium hyposulphite solution, as lead carbonate, by sodium carbonate or purified soda-ash, without precipitating any copper or silver. After decanting the solution from the lead carbonate, silver and copper are obtained from it in the usual way. This method of separating lead prohibits the use of calcium poly-sulphide as a precipitant for the sulphides, because any calcium entering the regenerated lixiviationsolution would also be precipitated as a carbonate with the lead by soda-ash. Hence, a sodium sulphide must be employed. A full investigation has demonstrated that this is by no means detrimental. Sodium sulphide and hyposulphite are more advantageously used in the lixiviation-process than the corresponding calcium-salts. Another defect in the lixiviation-process consisted in the necessity of a very perfect chlorination of the silver in the ore, because silver in

Jan 1, 1885

By D. S. Sanders

IN the four mills of the Cerro de Pasco Copper Corp. in Peru, some 3000 tons of complex sulphide ores are treated daily, with four kinds of concentrates produced: copper, lead, zinc, and pyrite, each containing values in silver, gold, bismuth, and some other metals. Copper occurs in the various ores as chalcopyrite, enargite, tetrahedrite, tenantite, bournonite, and chalcocite; lead as galena; and zinc as sphalerite and marmatite. Small amounts of silver and tungsten minerals are also present. The gangue consist mainly of shale, quartzite, calcite, rhodochrosite, pyrite, and pyrrhotite. In general the values are freed with a relatively coarse grind, about 70 prr cent minus 200 mesh being the finest to which the pulps are ground. In Morococha and Casapalca however. sphalerite particles much finer than this contain inclusions of chalcopyrit r. At Cerro de Pasco the silver and gold are present in all sizes of the ground pyrite.

Jan 1, 1945

By John Hays Hammond

The Transvaal comprises about 120,000 square miles (nearly • the size of the United States Territory of New Mexico). Besides the famous Witwatersrand, which will here be de scribed in detail, there are two quartz-mining districts of some importance, viz., Lydenburg and De Kaap. The Lydenburg district first attracted attention in 1876, when the alluvial deposits of that section began to be exploited. At a later period vein-rnining was started, and at the present time several companies are operating in that district. The product in 1898 of five companies, running 137 stamps, was 154,560 tons of ore, yielding 108,884 crude ounces of gold (an average of 14.09 dwt. crude gold per ton) valued at £392,378. The De Eaap gold-fields were discovered in 1884. In 1898, seven companies, running 200 stamps, produced 89,760 crude ounces of gold, valued at £314,792. I. Mining Titles in the Transvaal. The mining laws of the Tranuvaal are most excellent in char acter, and while the claims cover every square foot of land for an area of nearly 40 miles long by from 2 to 3- miles wide, there have been practically no conflicts over extra-lateral rights. Notwithstanding the change in the political status of the Transvaal likely to follow the present war, it may be coufi dently assumed that the main features of the mining law of the South African Republic will be retained, and certain op pressive featureu of monopolies, etc., bearing with special weight on the mining industry, will be abolished. The dynamite mo nopoly was one that bore most heavily on the mining industry; and, according to the Reports of the State Mining Engineer, explosives, including fuse and detonators, amounted to nearly 10 per cent. of the total working costs of the mines. Further more, it was impossible to obtain the proper quality for the most economical working, and often 80-per-cent. or 40-per-cent. gelatine had to be used- in many instances where 60-per-cent.

Jan 1, 1902

By Charles Albert Ashburner

The coal-fields of the United States have been variously classified as to their geographical positions. In 1887 I proposed slight changes to the classification generally used, for more convenient description of our coal-fields in my report on the statistical history of coal in the States during 1886 for the United States Geological Survey. This new classification seems to meet all practical requirements and has been generally adopted. The coal-areas are grouped in two divisions—the anthracite division and the bituminous division. The anthracite division, in a commercial sense, may be said to include the anthracite districts of Pennsylvania alone, although small amounts of anthracite are mined in Colorado and have been

Jan 1, 1890

By R. E. Radabaugh, J. M. Brown, J. S. Merchant

The Gilman district is on the northeast flank of the Sawatch Range in central Colorado. It has yielded a total of 10,000,000 tons of ore having a value of over $250,000,000. Paleozoic sediments intruded by a Tertiary quartz latite sill and unconformably overlying Precambrian intrusives and metasediments comprise the country rock of the area. The sediments strike northwesterly and dip 8° to 12° northeasterly. Structures in the Precambrian are related to the Homestake shear zone of the Colorado mineral belt. Only minor folding and faulting occur in the sediments. The principal ore bodies are massive sulfide replacement deposits in carbonate rocks. They consist of long, pipe-like mantos in the completely dolomitized Mississippian Leadville Limestone and funnel-shaped chimneys of copper- silver ore cutting across the Mississippian and Devonian strata. Mineralization is continuous from the chimneys into the mantos. The principal ore bodies are roughly in the shape of a four-tined fork which points up dip. Smaller manto deposits occur in the Cambrian Sawatch Quartzite, and fissure veins are present in the Precambrian rocks. The principal minerals in the mantos are marmatite and galena in a gangue of pyrite and manganosiderite. The chimneys consist of a central core of pyrite with erratically distributed chalcopyrite, tetrahedrite, freibergite, and occasional galena with a shell of zinc ore on the outer margin. Both the chimneys and the mantos are surrounded by imperfect shells of manganosiderite and sanded dolomite. The mineralization is of Laramide age. Hydrothermal alteration affects all rock units to varying degrees. Clay mineral alteration halos occur around the ore bodies. Hydrothermal solutions have developed sanded rock, rubble filled channels, and banded zebra textures, principally in the Leadville Limestone. Structural control of the ore bodies is not well defined. Both the location of the district and the chimneys are probably related to basement structures. The mantos are largely controlled by stratigraphic factors and a pre-Pennsylvanian karst topography in the Leadville Limestone, which were modified by hydrothermal activity, and by weak zones of northeasterly trending faults.

Jan 1, 1968

By Lucien Eaton

VENTILATION in the iron mines of the Lake Superior region in nearly all cases is natural; that is, it is induced by the difference in elevation between different outlets in the mine and by the difference in temperature of the air in the mine and that outside. This difference in temperature is frequently augmented by placing a steampipe in the upcast shaft; but aside from this, artificial aids to ventilation have been rare until - recent years. In some of the older mines, as at the Cliffs Shaft mine at Ishpeming, Mich., in the 80's, fans have been used when there was only one opening to surface, but their use was abandoned as soon as a natural circulation of air started. In recent years, the Newport mine at Ironwood, Mich., was the first to use positive mechanical ventilation. The installation was not large enough, however, to give definite results, reliance being placed largely on natural ventilation. With the coming of warm weather in the spring of 1914, the necessity of positive mechanical ventilation at the Lake mine of the Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Co. at Ishpeming, Mich., became evident. The workings of the Lake mine are under the bed of old Lake Angeline, which was pumped out in 1894, and the mine had been in operation for 6 years prior to that date making a total of 26 years of continuous operation. The total production, up to 1914, amounted to over 8,000,000 tons. The ore was first mined by square-set rooms and pillars, but this was later changed to top slicing and caving. Both methods required the use of large amounts of timber, probably 80,000,000 board feet in all, practically all of which remained in the timber mat. The slow oxidation of this timber was one of the principal causes leading to the installation of mechanical ventilation. The mine was served by only one working shaft, called No. 4, a second outlet being provided by a raise to the surface from the old workings on the south side of the mine. This raise was the "down cast;" but it was very small and the drifts and raises leading to it were too small and crooked to permit an adequate amount of air to enter the mine, especially during the warmer weather. Measure-

Jan 8, 1920

By C. M. Young

The safety lamp is the most common and convenient apparatus for detecting inflammable gases in mines, the presence of gas being shown by a blue flame, called the cap, if the wick has been lowered to suppress the luminous flame. The height of the cap increases with the proportion of gas and with the temperature of the lamp flame. Lamps of the Wolf type, the fuel of which is benzine, have a hotter flame than lamps in which vegetable oils are used, such as the Davy, and the Clanny, and are more sensitive than the latter and their many modifications. The Piehler alcohol lamp gives a still higher cap while the Clowes hydrogen lamp is most sensitive of all. While the effect of the temperature of the source of ignition is well known, the writer knows of no previous attempt to correlate the change of this temperature with change of the height of the cap produced, In order to determine the height of the cap at various temperatures, it was necessary to have a source of ignition the temperature of which could be accurately controlled over a considerable range. This condition was met by a coil of wire of high fusing point heated by an electric current controlled by a variable resistance. The use of a coil offered the further advantage of freedom from complications due to the flame of a burning fuel. Such a flame, being itself of variable height, would to some extent raise or lower the elevation of the base of the cap and therefore add to the difficulty of determining the height of the cap. Besides this, the presence of a small cap from the lamp fuel, commonly known as the "fuel cap," would interfere with the observation of small gas caps. After some experiment, a coil was made of platinum wire, No. 26, diameter 0.016 in. The coil was 17/64 in. (6.746 mm.) in outside diameter and had eight full turns in a length of 1/2 in. (12.69 mm.). This was connected to an electric circuit through an adjustable resistance, as shown in Fig. 1. In order to measure the temperature, a thermocouple was inserted in the center of the coil; the leads passed out at the ends and were ccnducted to a millivoltmeter. It is probable that the current of air passing upward through the coil resulted in the indication of a tempera-

Jan 1, 1920

By W. G. Sinclair

The wartime momentum of exploration continued throughout the year 1945 despite the end of hostilities in mid-August. The table below illustrates drilling activity in the various categories: Completed wells. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401 Wildcats.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .104 Wildcat discoveries, oil.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Wildcat discoveries, gas-condensate.. . . . . . . 4 Development wells.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .297

Jan 1, 1946

By Brahm Prakash, R. Schuhmann

Chemical conditions for flotation and nonflotation of cassiterite and fluorite with oleic acid as collector and with alizarin dyes as modifying agents were studied by means of small-scale, vacuum-flotation tests. Artificial cassiterite was prepared for these tests by high-temperature methods, especially by crystallization from borax melts.

Jan 1, 1950

By L. T. Larson

The spectral reflectivity of zirconium in light of 441 to 668 nanometers (nm) wavelengths and air immersion has been determined. Bireflectance and apparent-angle -of-rotation measurements show zirconium to be optically isotropic when examined in light of approximately 484 nm wavelength. There is a direct relationship between bireflectance and the tilt of the basal pole of zirconium from the surface normal. This relationship allows the determination of the spatial orientation of the basal pole of an individual single crystal within a coarse-grained poly crystalline section to within± 2 to 3 deg for angles of basal pole tilt from 0 to 90 deg. In recent years considerable attention has been given to the quantitative determination of optical properties of opaque minerals by use of vertically incident, plane-polarized light. In particular, Cameron' and Cameron et a1.2 have developed criteria for the identification of a large number of anisotropic ore minerals based upon measurement of the apparent angle of rotation and the ellipticity or phase difference of the reflected light. It was shown by Larson and Pickle-simer3 that apparent-angle-of-rotation measurements may also be used to determine crystallographic orientations of grains of noncubic metals. In particular, it was shown that the basa.1 pole orientation in space of zirconium grains can be determined to ±3 deg for those grains with basal pole tilts of 10 to 90 deg from the plane of the section. Another, even more widely studied, optical property is reflectivity. cameron4 has commented upon measurement of the reflectance of plane-polarized, vertically incident light and Bowie and Taylor5 have made such measurements an integral part of their system of ore-mineral identification. Leow6 has reported on the spectral reflectivity of molybdenite and has used reflectivity values to calculate refractive indices and absorption coefficients. Cameron7 has made use of reflectivity values to ascertain aniso-tropic ore mineral symmetry and Piller and v. Gehlen8 have evaluated sources and importance of errors in reflectivity measurements as applied to calculation of optical constants. cambon9 has shown that reflectivity measurements using vertically incident, plane-polarized light are useful in the investigation of metals and in the identification of phases present in alloys. Bronson10 has made preliminary measurements on the optical anisotropy of beryIlium and Mott and Haines11 have published qualitative data on the intensity of light reflected from sections of bismuth, tin, and aluminum when these metals are microscopically examined under crossed polarizing plates. Koritnig12 has correlated the reflectivity of homogeneous solid solutions with their chemical compositions. From the above work and investigations in progress by this author, it is apparent that accurately determined values for the reflectance of vertically incident, plane-polarized monochromatic light from carefully polished surfaces of noncubic metals can prove useful in identification, composition determinations, and crystallographic orientation applications. Finally, reflectivity values, when measured in two media of differing refraction index and related to standards whose spectral reflectivities in these media are known, can be used to calculate optical constants such as refractive index and absorption coefficient. These constants may prove of use to those concerned with problems of electron band configuration. This paper reports the spectral reflectivity of zirconium measured in light of 441 to 668 nanometers (nm) wavelengths and air immersion. It also gives maximum bireflectance values for a prism section of zirconium in these wavelengths and shows how bire-flectance may be used to determine the crystallographic orientation of zirconium single crystals. Because of the lack of information on the reflectivities of the standards in oil immersion, no attempt is made to calculate the refractive indices or absorption coefficients although it is recognized that such values may be of fundamental importance. METHOD Single crystals of zirconium were cut by electro-discharge machining from a single-crystal rod grown from iodide bar by an electron-beam zone-melting process.13 The crystal sections were mounted in cold-setting epoxy resin and mechanically polished to a plane, uniform, bright surface. Each crystal was then chemically polished in a 26/26/43/5 mixture (by vol) of water, nitric, lactic, and hydrofluoric acids to remove the mechanically damaged and smeared surface layer. Final polish was obtained by electropolishing at 30 v in a bath of methyl alcohol and perchloric acid (98/2 by vol) at -70oc.14 Reflectivity measurements were made using a photometer system designed and developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and described in detail by Larson.15 Briefly, the reflectivity measuring system consists of a reflecting microscope; a double-beam, null-balancing photometer array; a mechanically driven microscope stage; and a direct X-Y readout of the reflectivity of the specimen relative to its orientation on the microscope stage. The measuring photometer receives its signal from the specimen through a slotted Wright occular placed on top of the photovisual head of the microscope. The reference photometer receives light through a flexible glass "light pipe" from a mirror in the reflecting system of the microscope. Monochromatic light is attained through use of interference filters (15-nm half-peak width pass bands) placed in front of a stabilized Vickers 12 v, 100 w, tungsten-filament, quartz-iodide lamp.

Jan 1, 1970

By Carel Robinson

THE little coal mine at Otsego, in the Winding Gulf field of southern West Virginia was dying. In the history of coal mining thousands of mines have been successful at first, but usually a change occurred and profits ceased. Often be change was so gradual and extended over such a length of time that the fundamental causes did not stand out in sharp relief and their significance was not realized. Studies often reveal that the cause for failure was in the arteries that connect the producing places with the mine entrance. Profits continued so long as the working places were close to the tipple and while the thrill of newness aid ease of access resulted in effective supervision from day to day. The air- way and haulageway, the wire line and manway, may have been sufficient when the distance from the entrance was a few hundred feet, but were inadequate when this was extended for thousands of feet.

Jan 1, 1937

By Carle R. Hayward

WHEN lead production began to recede from the peak productions of 1929 many plants took advantage of the curtailed operations to make necessary improvements and repairs about the plant. There followed a period of adjustment to synchronize production and demand, which merged in the present period of marking time. The lead smelting and refining industry has produced little that is new during the past year except in what might be called makeshifts, which have been introduced to make operation at fractional capacity profitable. This is more particularly true in refineries than in smelters. The Parkes process had become standardized during the period of normal production, with softening, desilverizing, and dezink-

Jan 1, 1935