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By John Wellington Finch

WHAT is an engineering opportunity? To the mining .engineer the natural assumption is that the first requisite 'is a mineral deposit, but, of course, it is not so simple as that. There are at various points on the earth really very great mineral deposits which, on account of geographic location, backwardness of the country, or hostility of its natives, are now, and for a long time to come will be, quite valueless. The mining engineer, and for that matter the civil engineer, is more dependent upon the decisions of capital than upon any other factor in his profession. Ordinarily it is to be assumed that money will go to any place where it is clear that an adequate return upon its investment can be secured, but for many years it has not been safe to depend upon this. ' As already stated, there are many places where local conditions are such that mining is not safe to engage in and there are still other places in which conditions have been so aggravated by the Great War and by the social unrest which has upset the Asiatic region that capital is naturally most reluctant to venture, even when engineering data makes the undertaking appear attractive. It will be evident, I. believe, that there are many factors vital to the success of a mining enterprise in some of the remote countries which we do not have to consider in the United States and which do not, in fact, exist here.

Jan 1, 1924

By PHILIP N. MOORE

THE problem of managing the policies of the Institute so that a middle course may be drawn between the close control of a few who are so situated that they can give continuing attention and intermittent control by occasionally present directors presentation .of the subject is to bring clearly before the membership of the Institute a summary of the attendance at the Directors' meetings for the past four years.

Jan 1, 1924

By AIME AIME

MORTIMER ELWYN COOLEY, dean of the College of Engineering and Architecture of the University of Michigan, has been elected president of the American Engineering Council of the Federated American Engineering Societies. This was announced at a meeting of the Executive Board of the Council held at the Cosmos Club in Washington on Sept. 30. Dean Cooley assumes office at once. The new head of organized engineering is a past president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and has a long record of distinguished service in education, under the government and in private capacities. He was born in Canandaigua, N. Y., March 28, 1855, and was graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1878. With his classmate, Dr. Ira N. Hollis, he was ordered to the U.S.S. "Quinnebaug," then fitting out at the Norfolk Navy Yard preparatory to a cruise in the Mediterranean.

Jan 1, 1921

By GERALD H. HUTTON

SINCE the inception of dredge mining, the attention of engineers and operators has been directed primarily toward mechanical improvements and refinements calculated to, reduce operating costs and to increase recoveries. The result has been to develop an efficient excavating and value-saving machine, which, in some instances, has an actual capacity of 15,000 cu yd. per day. Steel hulls and superstructures minimize the risk of destruction by fire and lengthen the life of the plant. Dredges now restore, to some extent, agricultural possibilities to mined ground. Large buckets, with correspondingly heavy parts, are able to handle heavy wash and massive boulders. Mechanical weaknesses have been strengthened. The use of manganese steel in bucket lines and tumblers permits the application too the bank of a digging force that can be withstood only by solid material, such as rock, cement or frozen ground. Various alloys of steel have been applied to certain duties and experiments in their heat treatment are still progressing. Haulage by tractor or truck is in common use. Discarded and worn steel parts are repaired or rebuilt by the use of the oxy-acetylene flame and the arc-welding machine. Gold and platinum saving is more efficient, although still subject to improvement. Dredging for tin ore is in successful operation. Crews are now highly specialized and experience has developed improved methods of work; particularly in the manipulation of dredges to build levees of tailings and to leave open waterways where desired. To sum up by the distribution of overhead expense over several units, ground under favorable conditions can now be dredge-mined for 5)2 c. per cu: yd., in spite of the increase in cost of supplies, power, and labor during, the past few years. Improvements in prospecting methods, however, have not kept pace with mechanical developments. Standard practices of ; testing ground today produce only wide approximations of values; although they obtain information concerning the character of the deposit and bedrock. It is interesting to note that few important changes in the methods of ten years ago are .to be recorded; the latest comparisons between pros¬pecting results and mined recoveries-have been at such variance as to cause confusion to the operator, and, in a degree, the sacrifice of the confidence of the capitalist. On this account, and because the growing scarcity of dredging ground. demands closer calculations on the part of the engineer, this appeal for collaboration and

Jan 1, 1921

By Arthur La Motte

I NDUSTRIAL explosives, as distinguished from military explosives, include high explosives and blasting powder. The high explosives which are best known are straight dynamite, gelatin dynamite, ammonia dynamite and permissibles. There are two kinds of blasting powder, saltpetre blasting powder and nitrate of soda blasting powder. Blasting powders are mechanical mixtures of nitrate of potash or nitrate of soda with sulfur and charcoal, highly compressed, granulated and glazed. They ignite from a spark and burn with relative slowness, the rate of burning and hence the rate of conversion into gases depending upon the size of the granulation and upon the degree of. confinement under which the powder is placed. High explosives, on the other hand, are chemical compounds which detonate; that is, when the explosive is subjected to a violent shock, provided in practice by a blasting cap or an electric blasting cap, the molecule of the essential ingredient, usually nitroglycerin, is disrupted and the energy and heat released cause any other explosive ingredients which may be present, such as ammoniuin nitrate or T.N.T., to decompose with a resultant evolution of gases at an extremely rapid rate varying from 6000 to 20,000 ft. per second.

Jan 1, 1924

By W. H. Bassett

ABOUT twenty-five years ago the copper industry had outgrown the Lake Superior production. The electrolytic copper producers had- their process well in hand and the industry was well started in the use of electrolytic copper, both for working into wire and sheet, and for the making of alloys. The trade knew that some brands of copper made good material and that other brands did not. There came together a group of men-a refiner, a rolling-mill man, and a manufacturer of electrical machinery-each of them desiring to know why there was a difference and what .it was. Much investigation was done with wire bars and cakes which involved ' chemical analysis, metallographic examination, physical tests and electrical tests. To find the influence of different kinds of copper in making brass 200 carloads of ingots were made into ,eyelet brass under careful observation; each carload was carefully analyzed and tested before used. The alloy was made and rolled under standard conditions and the results recorded.

Jan 1, 1924

By Virgil R. D. Kirkham

RECONNAISSANCE of a part of southeastern Idaho and small strip of western Wyoming lying between longitudes 111° and 111° and 45' W., and latitudes 43° and 43° and 30' N., comprising an area of approximately 1330 sq. mi., was undertaken during the summer of 1923 for the collection of data regarding the oil possibilities of the region. TOPOGRAPHY, SETTLEMENT, AND ACCESSIBILITY The entire area lies within the upper Snake River drainage basin. Snake River flows through the northeastern and eastern part of the area in a northwesterly direction. The entire drainage system has been controlled by the structure of the sedimentary beds in the area, which exhibit numerous alternations of hard and soft strata with consequent unequal erosion. The headwaters of the most important streams, as well as many others, flow in a northwesterly or southeasterly direction along

Jan 1, 1925

By AIME AIME

FOR constructive research in copper and brass and other non-ferrous metals and their alloys, and his contributions to the establishment of the present accepted high standards of quality William H. Bassett, technical superintendent and metallurgist of the American Brass Co., has been awarded the James Douglas Gold Medal for 1925. Mr. Bassett was born in New Bedford, Mass., on March 7, 1868, and was graduated in chemistry at the - Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1891. In the same year he went to Pope's Island Manufacturing Co., at New Bedford, as chemist where he remained until 1895, where he became a teacher in chemistry at the Swain Free School, which position he retained until 1900. He then became chemist for the New Jersey Zinc Co., at Newark N. J., and in 1902 went to the Coe Brass branch at Torrington, Conn., as Chemist. In 1903 he became chief chemist and metallurgist and since 1912 has been technical superintendent and metallurgist of the American Brass Co., with head- quarters at Waterbury, Conn.

Jan 1, 1924

By W. D. MOTTER

THE following brief description of the status of operations of the Chile Exploration Co. at Chuquicamata, Chile; and of the plant as it exists today, points out the-great progress that has been made since the initiation of prospect drilling in 1912. During the 11 years which have elapsed since then, a group of small mines, eking out a 'precarious existence, has been consolidated into one large operating property,, taking high rank among the world's producers of copper. After a drilling campaign followed by a construction period, the plant first started operations in 1915. Since then production has been gradually increased, as world conditions permitted, until the present status has been reached.

Jan 1, 1924

By Richard W. Smith

THERE are three distinct varieties of phosphate rock, in Tennessee, known commercially as: (a) the "brown" rock, which is the residual pro- duct of the weathering and natural concentration of certain phosphatic Ordovician limestones; (b) the "blue " rock, which is an unaltered phosphatic stratum of Mississippian or Devonian age; and (c) the "white" rock, which is the result of chemical replacement and deposition. Before 1894, South Carolina and Florida had supplied most of the phosphate of the United States, South Carolina leading until that date and Florida from then until the present time. In December, 1893, the blue phosphate of Tennessee was discovered almost simultaneously on Swan Creek, in Lewis County, by two independent parties-by one as the result of a careful and systematic search for a workable deposit of the long known kidney phosphate, and by the other through mistaking it for a "bloom" of coal. Leases were taken and, with further prospecting disclosing other deposits in the region, the development progressed as rapidly as 'could be expected without railroad transportation

Jan 1, 1924

By John A. Mathews

RESEARCH in the steel industry, as in other lines of manufacturing, has for its principal purpose the increasing of profits. That is what manufacturing companies are for, and all departments of the organization must be so coordinated as to lead to profitable operation. To divide a payroll into productive and non-productive labor is misleading. Productive labor, in fact, is necessary labor, and non- productive labor is the labor we can get along without. One might as well say that the steering wheel is not a part of an automobile as to say that the directing minds of an industry are non-productive. Legitimate manufacturing profits in a steel company or any other company are the reward that the public pays for service rendered or risk taken. The desire for profits is the impelling motive that leads investors .to take risks and build up industries that give employment to others. Every department of a company, be it executive, manufacturing, financial, sales, or research, must contribute to the one end which brings success-profits.

Jan 1, 1921

By John Wellington Finch

THE- impression which the public has of northern Canada is that it is a' vast wilderness of forests; river's, and. lakes, sparsely inhabited by. a few Indians and `containing a few, scattered trading posts of the Hudson Bay Co. This is far from the facts. The building of the Canadian Pacific Railway led to the discovery, in 1883, of the nickel deposits of Sudbury, Ont.; these are the largest known nickel deposits in the world and produce about 90 per cent. of the world's output of nickel. The building of the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway north, from North Bay, to open up farming lands along Lake. Temiskaming, resulted in the discovery and development of the great silver deposits of the Cobalt area, Ontario. Since the discovery of these deposits in 1903 to Dec. 31, .1923, Cobalt has produced a total of ' 327,301,897 oz. of silver, valued at $212,668,434, and paid in. dividends $88,338,185. In 1923 the production of Cobalt amounted to 10,285,247 oz. of silver. Just south of Cobalt, in South Lorrain,. a. new silver district has recently been developed and mills have started production. These deposits are of such extent that 'a branch railroad is under construction from Cobalt to that area. Northwest of Cobalt is the Gowganda silver area which is also a producer of silver ore and is now attracting outside attention. This area is not connected by railroad.

Jan 1, 1924

By Heinrich Oscar Hofman

IN THE death of Professor Hofman who was born on Aug. 13, 1852 and died on April 28, 1924, the world has lost a great metallurgist and a great author of metallurgical literature. Measured in time his life was not quite seventy-two years, but measured in work accomplished it was much longer than this. It is not surprising that Dr. Hofman became a great scholar for his father, Karl Hofman, was on the faculty of Heidelberg University, and his early days were spent in these surroundings. He studied in the University under such men as Kirchoff and Bunsen and often spoke of the intimate relations he had with them. Following his course at Heidelberg, he studied at the Clausthal Mining Academy where he graduated with honors, receiving the degrees of Mining Engineer and Metallurgical Engineer in 1877.

Jan 1, 1924

By GEORGE ROBERT DE BEQUE

WHAT is wrong with oil shale? The answer is of interest to the public, to the oil refiner, and to the engineer. Many people have invested in shale land or shale securities, and others would invest if early development of the industry were certain. In the face of increasing demands for oil products, oil refiners are threatened with inability to maintain present output unless the supply of domestic petroleum is supplemented. Development of the oil shale industry would open a new field for engineering services. The object of this paper is to suggest reasons why there is but one shale plant in operation in the United States, and to discuss the probable time when the business will be firmly established in Colorado. As the Colorado deposits are the richest and largest in the world, ample supply of material is assured, consequently, this discussion will be confined principally to technical problems and economic problems affecting shale development.

Jan 1, 1924

By J. V. W. REYNDERS

FIRST of all let me express my affectionate gratitude for the cordiality and good will of your reception. On the part of the men I venture to interpret the character of your greeting, not only as a recognition of the position to which you have been good enough to elect me, but also as an expression of your friendly attitude. However, I cannot pass over the tribute of the ladies so casually: Nor does it seem possible to do justice to my sentiments in addressing them collectively. I would feel more equal to the task if I could have the opportunity to talk to them singly, in doing which I know I may count upon their good sportsmanship not to compare notes. There has been some discussion between Mr. Kelly and myself as to our respective duties on this occasion: The precedents are not clear as to whether the retiring or the incoming president is expected to speak at length. Mr. Kelly's argument was that as the incoming president confines himself to promises for the future his field is a broad one and his opportunities for extending his remarks correspondingly unlimited.

Jan 1, 1925

The evident need to improve the reliability of fluid power systems in underground coal mining equipment prompted the U.S. Bureau of Mines, and later the Department of Energy, to contract with the Fluid Power Research Center at Oklahoma State University for a research project to develop methods for achieving this end. Since the work of the contract was completed at about the time DOE was relinquishing its underground coal mining projects to BOM it was decided to issue the final report under 80M cover. The contract revealed that the major causes of poor reliability were: (1) poor overall system design, (2) poor component contamination toleranace, (3) poor system filtration, and 4) poor maintenance practices stemming from a lack of defined maintenance procedures and enforcement of same. This report demonstrates the variability of the reliabilities of components of similar performance description when subjected to standard tests. Improved design procedures are recommended and the information needed to specify and select components whose reliability is predictable and optimum without sacrifice in performance or significant increase in envelope size.

Jan 1, 1983

By E. H. Hamilton

THE furnace on which the following investigation was based had dimensions 48 by 160 in., and was in continuous operation during the three days of the test. The average charge consisted of PER CENT. LB. PER HOUR Bed ore?14.5?2,980 Roast from Dwight-Lloyds?44.5?9,160 Siliceous ore?3.5?720 Iron flux?2.1?430 Battery plates?0.5?103 Lime rock?23.9?4,925 Briquettes?4.0?825 Scrap iron?2.1?430 M. P. slag?4.2?865 L. P.speiss?0.7?142 Total 100.0 THE furnace on which the following investigation was based had dimensions 48 by 160 in., and was in continuous operation during the three days of the test. The average charge consisted of PER CENT. LB. PER HOUR Bed ore?14.5?2,980 Roast from Dwight-Lloyds?44.5?9,160 Siliceous ore?3.5?720 Iron flux?2.1?430 Battery plates?0.5?103 Lime rock?23.9?4,925 Briquettes?4.0?825 Scrap iron?2.1?430 M. P. slag?4.2?865 L. P.speiss?0.7?142 Total?100.0?20,580

Jan 1, 1924

By AIME AIME

In the present number of Mining and Metallurgy, issued on the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Institute, it appears appropriate to chronicle a few of the interesting incidents respecting its early life. We are fortunate in being able to cull the following notes from unpublished manuscripts of Doctor Raymond and Doctor Drinker, than whom no other members could have written with greater exactness and fidelity. THE seventh decade of the 19th century may be said to have marked an. era in the history of the world. Industrially and .commercially it was marked by the wide application and utilization of discoveries already made, which came to their full effect at this period in steamships, railways, telegraph and cable lines; the standardization of parts in machines, from watches to locomotives; the use of 'dynamite, antiseptic surgery, the open-hearth steel process, the compressed-air rock-drill, the electric generator, and the Gatling gun. Through the opening of the Suez canal in 1870 the maritime trade of the world was revolutionized, sailing vessels were supplanted by steamers, while ocean cables and ocean "tramps" brought about far more rapid movement of commerce than had before been experienced. Politically, this period was marked by the sudden birth of the German empire and the beginning of that intensive internal development of the national resources of that empire in preparation for colonial extension and war, the amazing result of which has been made evident by the recent world conflict. In the United States, the significance of this decade was peculiarly important. The re-admission to the union of Virginia, Mississippi, Texas and Georgia in

Jan 1, 1921

By AIME AIME

NEARLY two hundred 'engineers attended the dinner given at the Hotel Pennsylvania on Monday-evening, Oct. 10, to the delegation from the American l3nginiering Societies to Great Britain and France when the John Fritz Medal was presented to Sir Robert Hadfield and to Eugene Schneider. Representatives of the British and French Governments ' and of foreign engineering societies gave to the event an international aspect unique in gatherings of engineers. Messages from men distinguished in science, statesmanship and diplomacy were read. Medals struck by the French Government were presented to the general chairman of the deputation, to the chairman of each' individual delegation and to the president's of the four Founder Societies. The meeting was regarded by engineers as formally ushering in a definite movement for world unity in the engineering profession. J. Vipond Davies, president of the United Engineering Society, acted as toastmaster. The speakers ,were Ambrose Swasey, Charles F. Rand, F. B. Jewett, A. S. Dwight, John R. Freeman, all members of the deputa- tion; and M. Gaston Liebert, French Consul General; Captain G. H. Armstrong, British Counsel General; G. G. Clapperton, representing the British Institution bf Electrical Engineers, and Prof. Jacques Cavalier, spokesman for the French universities. Among the engineers from other cities was Governor. James Hartness of Vermont.

Jan 1, 1921

By AIME AIME

THE 131st meeting of the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers was held in New York on Feb. 16 to 20, 1925, with the largest registration of any previous meeting, the total being 1320 compared to 1276 in 1924. The technical sessions were more largely attended and aroused more discussion than ever before. There were joint meetings with the Mining Section of the National Safety Council, under the auspices of the Industrial Relations Committee of the Institute and two very important lectures, the Howe Memorial Lecture, under the auspices of the Iron and Steel Committee, and the lecture by Dr. Carl Benedicks, of Sweden, on Corrosion, under the auspices of the Institute of Metals Division. The Petroleum Division conducted its annual Symposium on Oil which will be published later in book form. At the annual business meeting on Feb. 17, the following ticket was elected, and the reports of the President, Treasurer, and Secretary 'were presented:

Jan 1, 1925