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By Ellis Clark

Within the last ten years the progressive party of China, headed by Li Hung Chang, the Viceroy of Chi-Li, has been making great efforts to develop the mining resources of that country, and particularly those that are within reasonable distances of the sea-board. Attention was first paid to the coal-deposits, especially those at KaiPing, which have been placed on a profitable basis with an output of 1500 tons per day, under the energetic management of Mr. Claude Kinder, M.I.C.E., and the successful financiering of Tong King Sing. These coal-mines were described in a report by Kwong Yung Kwang, edited as a paper for the Institute (Duns., xvi., 95.) The attention of the leaders of the progressive party has for the past five years been turned also toward the development of the precious and related metals—gold, silver, copper and lead. De-

Jan 1, 1891

By C. M. Ball

The magnetic concentration of iron-ores has been so often and so widely studied and discussed among the members of the Institute that any remarks concerning its general importance, from an economic standpoint, would be superfluous; but it is thought that a description of the Ball and Norton ore-separator, designed for cobbing and separating magnetic iron-ores, indicating its essential differences from other machines and the advantages claimed for it, together with some account of recent results obtained in its application to the concentration of such ores, will prove of interest. This machine is the joint invention of Mr. Sheldon Norton, of Hokendauqua, Pa., and the writer, and has been patented in the United States, Canada, and other countries. Of the accompanying illustrations, Pig. 1 represents a longitudinal vertical section of the perfected ore-separator, adapted for separating fine ore, and Fig. 2 the same, adapted for cobbing ore of the size of stove- or chestnut-coal. The two designs are identical in principle, and vary from each other in minor details only. The apparatus consists of a partially-closed chest, having an opening at f, from the feed-hopper, h, through which the ore is delivered to the machine from an ore-pocket or storage-bin provided with means for regulating the flow of ore, so that, when the machine

Jan 1, 1891

By Edmund C. Pechin

THE writer approaches this subject with a great deal of diffidence —first, because it is utterly impossible to treat it satisfactorily within the limits of a paper, and, secondly, because the larger development is of so comparatively a recent date as to make authoritative data on some interesting points unavailable. For over one hundred years small charcoal-fnrnaces have been in existence, at widely scattered points, making a few tons of iron daily, and then gradually increasing to a daily output of, say 10 to 12 tons, as the market widened. With the exhaustion of local supplies of wood, inaccessibility to market, and sharp competition, bringing lower prices, many were compelled from time to time to make temporary stops, and finally to cease altogether. During the first half of the century there were at different times in operation between 75 and 90 charcoal furnaces. The last Directory of the Iron and Steel Works of the United States (1890) gives 19 as the number of charcoal-stacks in Virginia. Of these several are cold, and, it is

Jan 1, 1891

By H. A. Wheeler

The great depths attained by some of the older mines, and the milch greater depth at which they will have to he worked in the not distant future, strongly emphasize the imperfect and inadequate character of our present hoisting-practice. The depth of 3000 feet having been exceeded at several places, and 4000 feet almost reached

Jan 1, 1891

By T. D. Ledyard

SIR WILLIAM LOGAN, our great geologist, predicted that Canada would become eventually one of the greatest iron-producing countries of the world. Although possessed of numberless deposits of iron-ore, we have not yet done much to verify this prediction. Causes can be found for our backwardness, the principal one being

Jan 1, 1891

By Sir Lowthian Bell

WITH the exception of air and water, it is open to question whether there is any form of matter which the human race could less easily spare than iron. Short of going the length of asserting that, without this metal for an anchor or steel for the compass, the adventurous navigator could never have crossed the wide Atlantic, we may credit the locomotive' and the steamer, and hence iron, for that sequence of events which has peopled North America with the

Jan 1, 1891

By Sir James Kitson

By the courtesy of the President and Council of the American Institute of Mining Engineers, I have been invited to take the chair and open the proceedings of this congress. It is a graceful compliment to those members of the Iron and Steel Institute who are your honored guests at this moment—an acknowledgment of high consid-

Jan 1, 1891

By A. Thies, Wm. B. Phillips

1. Introductory Remarks.—The Haile Gold Mine is in Lancaster county, South Carolina, 3 1/2 miles east of Kershaw station on the Charleston, Cincinnati and Chicago Railway. It was first opened about, the year 1832, and since that time has passed through various fortunes. Many different operations have been practiced here for extracting the gold : panning, grinding in Chilian mills or arrastras, stamping, the Designolle process, dry-crushing, and finally the Thies process of barrel-chlorination, which has now been in successful use for 2 1/2 years, and by which 36,000 tons of ore have been treated profitably. The Thies process is in brief the treatment of dead-roasted auriferous concentrates (pyrite, sometimes also chalcopyrite, as at the Phœnix mine, Cabarrus Co., N. C.) with nascent chlorine, without ' artificial pressure or exhaust, in lead-lined iron cylinders; the throw-

Jan 1, 1891

Jan 1, 1891

By Henry M. Howe

The striking features of American Bessemer practice aré its large output and its low initial silicon and initial temperature. These are interdependent. Large outputs implies short blows and short intervals between blows. Short blows imply low silicon and fast blowing. Low silicon implies short intervals and fast blowing. Our blows are short because we have little silicon to remove, and because we remove it fast by supplying blast rapidly. We get enough heat even with little silicon, because our blows and the intervals between them are so short that relatively little heat escapes from our vessels. Were we to lengthen our intervals, or to blow more slowly, we would have to meet the increased loss of heat from our vessels, either by using more silicon, or by melting hotter, i.e., by burning more coke, in the blast-furnace or in the cupola. Finally, our short intervals imply powerful machinery, efficient organization, and extreme specialization and subdivision of labor, which can be profitable only when the output is large. Let, us now take these points up in more detail, first glancing at some examples of our large outputs, given in Table I., and of the composition of our iron. Output.—On presenting such results to some foreign metallurgists, I have been told, " Oh yes, we quite understand that. You really turn out no more steel than we do. As a matter of personal pride, your manager gets up a tremendous spurt for a day, or even a week, crowds on men wastefully, rushes through great quantities of metal, and then for months afterwards has to recuperate. The machinery has been strained ; the owner's money has been wasted ; the men have been prostrated—all to gratify the manager's vanity. Your average output is no larger than ours." Personal pride has, doubtless, played its part; without it we would still be savages, or apes, or mollusks, if you prefer. These baser motives are the mudsills of progress, the soiled roots of that growth of which civilization is the flower. Great outputs were made

Jan 1, 1891

By C. B. Dudley

In October, 1878, and again in February, 1881, I had the honor to make public, through the medium of the American Institute of Mining Engineers, the results of an extended study of steel rails which had been in service, and which mere taken for the purpose from the tracks of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. These studies appeared in three papers. In the first of these papers the question. what kind of steel is least liable to fracture or disintegration in the track, was the principal one considered. In the second paper the question discussed was, does the power of steel to resist wear increase with the hardness ? In the third paper the relation between wear and the chemical and physical properties of the metal was the principal point considered. The general results arrived at, or the cooclusions reached, were, as follows: 1. That a mild steel is less liable to fracture, and if properly made, less liable to crushing or disintegration in the track than a harder steel. 2. That the wearing-power of steel in rails not only does not increase as hardness increases, but, on the contrary, diminishes; or, in other words, that a mild steel gives less loss of metal under the same service than a hard steel. These conclusions may be briefly stated in a single sentence—namely, in rails mild steel is not only less liable to fracture and disintegration in the track, but it also gives longer life, or wears more slowly under the same traffic; than harder steel. It is perhaps hardly necessary to add that by mild steel is meant steel

Jan 1, 1891

By T. Sterry Hunt

Jan 1, 1891

Jan 1, 1891

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 A. E. Seaton

In this paper it will be my endeavor to trace the development of the marine engine and its appurtenances, and the general progress that has taken place in marine engineering generally during the past fifteen years, rather with the object of attributing much of it to the successful efforts of the makers of iron and steel, thereby rendering my thanks to them for the valuable service they have contributed to my profession, than to recount what has been achieved by the skill, ability and perseverance of my colleagues in shipbuilding and engineering. The engineer has been at all times dependent on the ironmaster, and on more than one occasion his progress has been barred by the inability of the latter to overcome some obstacle to success in his manufacture. But on the other hand, it is equally true that the ironmaster has often been ahead of the engineer, and has been prepared, long beforehand, to supply that which would make a success for the marine engineer if he would avail himself of it.

Jan 1, 1891

Jan 1, 1891

By Elihu Thompson

The subject of welding by electricity has been so recently and so ably treated by Sir Frederick Brsmwell before the Institution of Civil Engineers* as to render evidently superfluous there-statement on this occasion of many facts and considerations which might be appropriately advanced, had they not been so well discussed in his paper already. The electrical arts grow rapidly in these days—a fact which is strikingly illustrated in the development of electric railways. In

Jan 1, 1891

By William P. Shinn

MR. GAYLEY'S admirable paper on the " Development of American Blast-Furnaces" has set forth very fully the history of the development of the Edgar Thomson furnaces since the construction of Furnaces A and B ; but it throws no light on the genesis of these furnaces. That earlier history it is the purpose of the present paper to record. Mr. Gayley truly says: "A new era in the manufacture of pigiron began in 1880 with the putting in blast of the Edgar Thomson furnaces." That era had its beginning with the construction of

Jan 1, 1891

By Oberlin Smith

The use of cast-iron tools, with chilled cutting-edges, for lathes, planers, boring-mills, etc., is not, as Gar as I can learn, very extensive in the United States, or perhaps in England and other parts of Europe. I have, however, no data to guide me in regard to foreign

Jan 1, 1891

By John W. Langley

In the summer of 1888 it was the fortune of the writer to present the subject of the desirability of establishing a set of samples of steel, which should be analyzed with extreme care, in order that they might become standards to which scientific and commercial analyses of iron and steel could be subsequently referred; also, that greater uniformity in the results of analyses might be brought about, since these standards would bear towards analytical methods somewhat the position which the original units of weight and length, the gramme and meter, or the pound and yard, preserved in Paris, London, and Washington, do to the mechanical arts. The plan met with hearty co-operation, with the result that com mittees were appointed in Sweden, Germany, France, England, and America, to receive the material and to see that the necessary au alyses were executed. In England, the British Association for the Advancement of Science appointed a committee, which subsequently published a plan

Jan 1, 1891