Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1910-11-22
AMERICAN INVENTIONS.
VI Mining and Metallurgy.
By FREDERIC J. I1ASKIN.

the working power of the average human
being, it appears that the coal which is
taken out of the American mine in a
years time is even under present waste
full conditions, capable of doing as much
work as could be accomplished by every
man, woman and child on the whole
earth in five years. Many of the inven-
tons for the separation of coal from
slate and other wastes have been brought
out by Americans One of these is a
coal-washer. Pulses of water are thrown
up through a sieve containing the coal
and the slate The coal, being lighter
than the slate, is forced out with the
stream of water and is thus separated
from the unusable material 1t is the
belief of many mining experts that the
day will come when coal will be trans
formed into electricity at the mine and
carried to the user by giant transmission
plants. A recently invented appliance.
soon to be adopted, is an acetylene min
ing lamp. which is said to be superior to
any other kind of light for the miner.
In the mining Of iron ore the American
inventor has given to the world some
of its cheapest
cheap processes processes. It is
for Mining Iron. S se s sns' n 1 ,ne
world can a ton of ore be taken from
the ground and transformed into iron
and steel so cheaply as in the United
States. Huge steam shovels. immense
ore-carrying steamers, giant leaders and
unloaders and thousand and one other
contrivances have so cheapened the cost
of iron that it is now beyond the compe-
tition of any foreign nation.
1y,.-z
science that the American inventor
shines. When the alchemist of centuries
ago sought to transmute the baser met
ais into gold he laid the foundation of
modern chemistry. BY the aid of chem
istry the American metallurgist is able
to give to iron properties which do not
actually make gold, but do make riches
in a hundred forms. Many people believe
that BeSSemer Of England first invented
the modern process Of making steel. but
Andrew Carnegie, certainly an eminent
authority gives the credit to Pig Iron"
Kelly, an American The invention of
the process has revolutionized mining and
metallurgical science. Today steel is
DDS and it is generally believed by metal
lurgists that it marks as important an
era in the manufacture of iron ore into
steel as did the invention of the hearth
process.
BY the use of various rarer metals in
combination with iron ore, the metallur-
gist is able to produce steel of widely va
rying qualities. One of the most inter-
esting of these is combining vanavium
with the ore in the furnace small per-
centage of vanavium added to the ore
will make a steel much more elastic and
of much greater tensile strength than the
pure steel. An experiment as to the
relative strength of vanavium and cartSn
steel showed that In vibration testing
machine the carbon steel stood 10000
vibrations. as compared with 100000 for
the vanavium steel. The carbon steel
withstood 5000 blows of a light hammer.
as compared with 10000 for nickel steel
and $1,000 for vanavium steel. Some
steels need to suffer no loss Of temper
under tremendous heat. The addition Of
a small percentage of tungsten gives to
steel this quality. and tungsten steel is
used In the manufacture Of high speed
tooi1.
4.