THE most successful and largest meeting of the Auxiliary to the A. I. M. E. was held this year. Great praise is due Mrs. Arthur S. Dwight, the acting chairman of the Ladies' Committee in the ab-sence of Mrs. Barron, and the other members of her committee for the able way in which they planned and carried out a varied and interesting program. Miss Margaret Callow, chairman of the Junior Committee, with her co-workers, made the days delightful for the Junior members, as well as visiting daughters. Under the leadership of Mrs. Jenkins, the registration of the ladies proceeded smoothly Monday morning. At the Mrs. Jenkins became ill with pneumonia on the second day of the meeting and was taken from the dinner to a hospital where she died the following Sunday. Born in Kansas City fifty years ago, she was an active and valued member of the Auxiliary in which she had long represented the Puget Sound Section. Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins, the latter treasurer of the Utah Consolidated Copper Co., had previously lived at McGill, Nev., where they are well known. She leaves a son and a daughter. luncheon on the fifth floor, Mrs. DeGolyer and Mrs. Church arranged a delightful hour, when greeting visit-ing friends proved more. interesting than food. Mrs. Bain efficiently ushered the ladies through the after-noon's program, seeing that they all found the buses on time. The first stop was at the Cloisters, where the quaint carvings and the faint odor of incense trans-ported all the visitors to the Middle Ages. That atmos-phere still clung, as we all looked at the marvelous collection of old Chinese jade, at the Metropolitan Museum, which was the next stop. The buses then took us to the MacDowell Club, where Mrs. Dwight gave a charming welcome, in the absence of the hostess, Mrs. Barron. The program, by Mr. and Mrs. Hardesty John¬son, was such a delight that repeated calls induced the artists to graciously respond with an encore. Then Mrs. Coster and Mrs. Sharpless assisted Mrs. Dwight in serving tea, about the glowing fireplace. In the evening the theater-goers guided by Mrs. Jordan were thrilled by "Interference.:" A detailed account of the annual meeting, in many ways the most interesting the Auxiliary has had, will be published later. This held the attention. of the mem-bers both morning and afternoon, on Tuesday. The absence of the President, Mrs. Barron, was much re-gretted, and the letter and the cablegram with her cor-dial greetings were much appreciated. Miss Stone ably presided in the place of Mrs. Barron, and graciously welcomed the incoming President, Mrs. Hoover. Her well-worded speech, accepting the office, was received with much enthusiasm. The visiting members were especially pleased with her description of herself as a "peripatetic-president." promising to visit the various sections as she crossed the continent on her frequent trips to California. An inspiring report was read from each section, and most particularly pleasing was a greet-ing brought by Mrs. Bateman of Toronto, from our sister organization in Canada. The sections are surely to be congratulated on their splendid work, not only for their own members, but also in sending clothing and other aids to the needy, as Mrs. Reynders directed, and in supporting libraries under the leadership of Mrs. Huntoon. The important work of the Educational Com-mittee, with its presentation of scholarships to various deserving young men, has been most efficiently carried on by Mrs. Jennings. Mrs. Jordan has inspired many to help in Braille, and Mrs. Eilers has extended the hos-pitality of the Auxiliary to many. The Washington Section is leading a movement to extend the privileges of Girl Scouting to the girls in lonely mining camps. The officers of the past year received flowers and grate-ful appreciation, and the incoming officers received a warm welcome. Very delightful features of the after-noon were the speech by the President of the A. I. M. E. for the coming year, Dr. George Otis Smith, and when a visiting member rose to say how much all the visiting members had enjoyed the Auxiliary's hospitality. The banquet and dance at the Waldorf were the most brilliant the Auxiliary has attended. Nearly twelve hundred were there to enjoy the festivity and to hear the speeches given, as Mr. Hoover and the other re-cipients accepted their medals and awards. The young people, the future supporters of the A. I. M. E. and the Auxiliary, enjoyed more hilarious tables in the bal-conies, and all enjoyed the dancing later.
AMOS PEASLEE BROWN Amos P. Brown, Professor of Geology and Mineralogy at the University of Pennsylvania, and a member of the Institute since 1888, died at Atlantic City, Oct. 9, 1917. An extended biography, by his classmate and lifelong associate, Witmer Stone, was published in the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 57'(1918), from which the following brief extracts have been taken. For want of space, we must omit reference to Professor Brown's extensive and valuable work on botany, zoology, paleontology, and physiology, to the latter of which sciences lie applied the methods of microscopic crystallography with striking success. Amos Peaslee Brown was born in Germantown, Philadelphia, on Dec. 3, 1864, the son of Amos Peaslee and Frances Brown, and the fourth child of a family of seven sons and two daughters. His earliest education was received at a small private school, but in the autumn of 1877 he entered the Germantown Academy. Deciding to take a scientific course in college he did not study Greek, and dropped Latin in his last years at school. He was thus able to graduate in June, 1852, entering the University of Pennsylvania the following autumn. He took the Towne scientific course, specializing in mining engineering after the sophomore year. He studied mineralogy under Prof. George A. Koenig, chemistry under Prof. Frederick A. Genth, physics under Prof. George F. Barker, astronomy under Prof. E. Otis Kendall, civil engineering under Prof. Lewis M. Haupt, mathe-matics under Prof. Henry W. Spangler and botany under Prof. Joseph T. Rothrock. He graduated in June, 1586, receiving the degree of B. S., and was chosen to deliver the bachelor's oration at the commencement at the old Academy of Music. He remained at the University another year, taking the post-graduate course in mining, and received the degree of E. M. in June, 1887. Soon after graduation, Brown secured a position as aide on the Second Geological Survey of Pennsylvania, under Ashburner, his first work consisting in the compilation of data respecting the coal-mining operations of the State. This occupied a year, mostly in the field, followed by office work in Pittsburgh. Finishing his work in the bituminous region in June, 1885, Brown returned to Philadelphia and accepted a position under Mr. Benjamin Smith Lyman, who had undertaken a survey of the New Boston and Morea coal lands in Schuylkill County, near Pottsville. The survey was a private enterprise, but the map was afterward published by the State Geological Survey. This work kept Brown in the field until late in the autumn, while the actual drawing of the map was. done in Philadelphia in the winter. In the following spring Mr. Lyman engaged in a survey and report on the "New Red" formation of Bucks and Montgomery Counties, in which Brown again acted as his assistant and prepared an account of the igneous rocks of the district, which accompanies Air. Lyman's report. His name appears on both the Bucks County map and that of the Morea anthracite district.. In the early autumn of 1889, before the Bucks County survey was completed, Brown left Mr. Lyman to accept a position as instructor in mining at the University of Pennsylvania, under his old professor, Dr. Koenig, and here lie remained for practically the rest of his life. In 1890 lie was instructor in mining and metallurgy; in 1892 professor of mineralogy and geology in the auxiliary department of medicine, which he held until the abolishment of the department in 1898. On March 5,1895, he became assistant professor of mineralogy and geology in the college faculty, and full professor in the spring of 1903, a position which he continued to hold until the spring of 1917, when he was forced to resign on account of failing health. From the autumn of 1892, after Dr. Koenig's retirement from the University, Brown took over the entire direction of the department, teaching in all branches of the subject-mineralogy, geology, lithology, crystallography, mining, and metallurgy. Soon after his return to the university he began studying for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, which was conferred upon him on June 16, 1893.
The stresses in the materials surrounding an underground opening are dependent upon the virgin stress field, the geometry of the opening and changes in boundary conditions as mining progresses. For most underground openings, especially in coal mines, roof bolts are installed to help stabilize the opening. While most parameters in roof bolt design and installation have been thoroughly investigated, the effect of the initial stress field on the effectiveness of roof bolts has not been recognized. This paper summarizes the results of investigation of the effect of the initial stress field on the performance of mine roof bolts. Roof bolt installations are duplicated in the laboratory utilizing conventional roof bolt frame, commercial roof bolts and shells, mine torque wrench, and encapsulated rock specimens for anchorage. A special and primary feature of the laboratory setup is the addition of a loading system for generating confining stresses within the rock surrounding the anchor. For this preliminary study, different levels of hydrostatic stress fields were induced at the anchorage specimen, instrumented roof bolts were installed in the usual manner, and the bolt load loss-with-time observed. Statistical analysis of data showed that the stress field at the anchorage horizon has a considerable influence on the mine roof bolts, i.e. the higher the stress level, the higher the anchorage efficiency.
SELWYN G. BLAYLOCK, who has been awarded the Douglas medal for 1927 for his achievements in the production of electrolytic zinc and the treating of complex lead, zinc and silver ore at the Sullivan mine, British Columbia, is a Canadian and one of the notable men who have come from McGill Uni-versity, where he graduated in 1899. As the medal was founded in 1922 by a group of James Douglas' friends to honor the memory of that distinguished Canadian metallurgist, who was an honorary LL.D. of McGill, it is extremely appropriate that it should be awarded to another Canadian metallurgist and McGill graduate, who has been notably successful in practice. Immediately after gradua- tion Mr. Blaylock obtained a position as chemist at the Trail smelter and two years later was made chief chemist and metallurgist. In 1907 he became superintendent of the Hall mines smelter and after a year became superintendent of the St. Eugene mine at Moyie. While there he was responsible for the purchase of the Sullivan mine and the use of methods of mining, especially sorting, which so improved the relative per- - centages of zinc and lead in the ore as to make it better material for blast-furnace smelting. The losses in zinc, both from sorting out and in the lead blast-furnace slag made a deep impression on him, and various methods of water concentration and the use of air-jigs and flotation to increase the recovery were tried under Mr. Blaylock's supervision as early as 1910. These were followed by experiments with direct fusion, volatilization in kilns, sulfite processes, and one similar to the Ashcroft proc-ess. In 1914 experiments were made with roasting, leaching, and electrolyzing the resultant zinc sulfate solution; the following year a plant was built at Tadanac which has been in successful operation since 1916, its capacity having been increased by successive steps to 275 tons of zinc per day. Experimental work continued on the feed for the zinc plant and a 150-ton mill to use the Horwood process was constructed, but as the results were not encouraging it was altered to wet magnetic concentration, which was successful and the plant was later increased in capacity to 600 tons per day. Meanwhile experiments with differential flota-tion showed promise and magnetic concentration was continued while flotation was developed to where it could be put into operation parallel to the magnetic plant. This flotation plant, started in 1920, was so successful that eventually the magnetic separation plant was abandoned. Lead smelting conditions at Trail were difficult on account of the necessity of mak-ing slags containing as much as 20 per cent zinc and because of the high percentage of fine flotation con-centrate. The improvements in sintering and smelt-ing made under Mr. Blaylock's direction have been notable. The Betts electrolytic refining process for lead was first used at Trail, and the plant has been brought to its present highly developed and efficient state under Mr. Blaylock's direction. The first com-mercial Cottrell plant in connection with lead smelt-ing was also built there. The capacity of the Tada-nac plant is now approximately 750 tons per day of refined metal, including lead, zinc, copper, antimony, cad- mium, gold and silver. All the work necessary for this nota- ble development has neces- sarily been the work of many hands, directed by Mr. Blay- lock. In 1924 he was awarded the McCharles Medal by the University of Toronto for his achievements in con- nection with the production of electrolytic zinc and the solving of the difficulty of treating the complex lead- zinc-silver ore of the Sullivan mine, and developing it from a small producer to one of the most important mines of the world, now producing 150,000 tons of lead and 90,000 tons of zinc annually. Having spent all his professional life in one remote place, Mr. Blaylock is relatively little known per-sonally to others of his pro-fession, and the award indi-cates the truth in Emerson's well known epigram about the mouse-trap.
THE Secretary of Commerce is to be urged to as-sume leadership in assembling data as to produc-tion and consumption of minerals and metals, and studies of their importance in trade, as a result of the joint conference of the Institute and the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America, held on Tuesday afternoon, Feb. 15. With no set program and no especial effort to promote interest 120 members of the two soci-eties assembled and for two hours discussed in the most informal and frank manner the whole situation. George Otis Smith acted as chairman, Clinton H. Crane, who was to have served in that capacity, having been called abroad unexpectedly. Major Taylor for the Army and Capt. R. E. Bakenhus for, the Navy paid high tribute to the value of the reports already made by the committees of the two societies and pointed out the need of addi-tional data and of constant review of the figures, as a measure of national defense. J. E. Spurr, R. C. Allen, W. O. Hotchkiss, Fred Hellmann, W. Spencer Hutchin-son, P. N. Moore, A. C. Lane, E. E. Ellis, and others discussed various phases of the subject, reviewed what had so far been done, what was now in progress, what had been planned for the future, and the necessary limitations of the work. A. W. G. Wilson related the experience of the Canadian Government in this field, emphasized the importance of studies of the rate of consumption, and brought up the special case of the waste of the sulfur in sulfide ores with correspondingly increased demand on raw sulfur supplies. Mr. Lane pointed out that conservation, to be soundly based, must recognize the necessity of the present value of the ex-pected future returns exceeding the cost of the conserva-tion. Mr. Ellis called attention to the remarkably rapid change in technology and other factors that made predic-tions for more than a very short period extremely risky. Mr. Hotchkiss noted the large part of modern industry that is fundamentally dependent on minerals. Studies made by him indicated that even in a furniture manu-facturing center, such as Grand Rapids ids with its large consumption of wood, the metal and mineral industries constituted 60 per cent of the industrial life. For Michi-gan as a whole 55 per cent of the capital used in all in-dustries was employed in the mining and the metal in-dustries. This, he said, was little recognized because the buyer of alloys and metals was so far from the pro-ducer of raw materials, .but the ultimate supply of the latter was evidently of fundamental importance to the whole people. Mr. Spurr held that the more knowledge as to these matters the better. Mr. Hellmann felt that in the especial case of copper, wastage was less impor-tant than markets and economical routing of metal to them. Mr. Hutchinson classified minerals into three groups: (a) those, such as gold, that are used with very little loss; (b) those, such as coal, as are entirely consumed in use; and (c) the intermediate group. The problem, he thought, was necessarily different for the minerals of each group. Mr. Manning proposed definite-ly that since it was manifestly a great national problem, the Department of Commerce be asked to assume leader-ship here and to devote the necessary funds and staff to keeping up such a perpetual inventory of mineral resources as would best serve the public needs, both for war and peace. Both George Otis Smith and Scott Turner agreed that this was probably already within the authority of the Department but Mr. Turner told of the difficulty in obtaining sufficient funds for the work. Recognizing that the job was large enough to require the help of both public and private interests and the desire of the two societies to be helpful to the maximum extent, the Chair was asked to appoint a committee from the meeting to present to the Council of the Society and the Board of Directors of the Insti-tute a definite plan for further work. P. N. Moore, Van H. Manning, J. E. Spurr, R. C. Allen, R. H. Richards and W. S. Hutchinson were appointed and drew up the following plan for, consideration
DURING the last quarter-century it has gradually become apparent that the science of metallog-raphy must deal not alone with the constitu-tion and structure of metals and alloys, but with the correlation of chemical composition, constitution, thermal treatment, mechanical treatment, structure, and temperature, with their physical and mechani-cal properties. The development of technique in microscopy, etch-ing, thermal analysis, and general physical measure-ments has been no small factor in the progress of metal-lographic science. This development has been largely incident to the study of alloy systems and impurities in metals and alloys. About 270 binary, 40 ternary and 3 quarternary alloy systems have been investigated to date. Only preliminary investigations have been made on most of these systems, and much work remains to be done in this direction. In Vol. I of The Metallographist, January, 1898, we find the following definition of metallography as offered by F. Osmond: Metallography, generally, speaking, signifies the structure of metals and of their alloys. The science is not confined to the use of a single instrument, the microscope for instance, whose manipulation requires a certain training, giving rise, therefore, to a specialty and to specialists. In reality we begin by using our eyes in the examination of metals and when they show us all that they can see, we provide them with lenses of increasing magnifying power, until we are stopped, at about 2000 diam¬eters, before the mysteries of the ultra-microscopic. But the naked eye and the optical instruments are only an incomplete means of investigation; They take, so to speak, a first inventory; the indications furnished by the visible characters, form, color or luster must be controlled by chemical analysis, micro-chem¬istry and crystallography, by the determination of physical and mechanical constants, in a word, by all the available means for the differentiation and identification of bodies. In the same issue of The Metallographist, A. Sauveur epitomizes the results in the field of metallography up to that time (1898). The last decade has witnessed an activity in metallurgical researches which has probably no parallel in the history of the science, owing to the strictly scientific spirit with which they have been conducted. Scientists in all metallurgical countries have taken hold of the industrial metals, and are applying to them the scientific methods of investigation of this highly scientific age. Witness the work of Sorby, Abel, Muller, Osmond, Howe, Martens, Arnold, Wedding, Roberts-Austen, H. Le-Chatelier, Charpy, Ledebur, Behrens, De Benneville, and others. The metals and their alloys are being dissected, and the high-power objective, that wonderful instrument of modern researches, is revealing to us their intimate structure, throwing a flood of light upon their constitution, chemical and physical, the prac-tical as well as the theoretical value of which could hardly be overestimated. Their physics, hitherto much neglected, is being minutely investigated. Their thermal behavior is being ascer-tained with a precision rendered possible only by the extremely delicate pyrometer of H. LeChatelier. Their magnetic, prop-erties, their electric conductivity, their diffusion, their physical and mechanical properties in general, are being investigated with a degree of accuracy never before attained. The chemist is energetically at work, in his endeavor to establish the true chemical relation between the metals and their impurities, and successful excursions are being taken into the, domain of their proximate compositions. As Mr. Osmond has aptly said, modern science is treating the industrial metal like a living organ-ism, and we are led to study its anatomy, i.e., its physical and chemical constitution; its biology, i.e., the influence exerted upon its constitution by the various treatments, thermal and mech-anical, to which the metal is lawfully subjected; and its path-ology, -i.e., the action of impurities and, defective treatments upon its normal constituents."
Annual Meeting of Woman's Auxiliary
James Douglas Medal Awarded S. G. Blaylock