Perrysburg journal. (Perrysburg, Wood Co., O. [Ohio]) 186?-1965, 1914-08-27
MACHINE TAKES
MINERS JOBS
Owners Wonder if New Epoch
in the Industry Has
Arrived.
DEVICE is "FooL PROOF
Invention of H. A. Kuhn Will Mean
Saving of SO Per Cent,
1t is Said.

come to the coal-mining industry?
This was the question in the minds
of numerous coal operators and others
interested in coal mining as a day or
two since they watched the operation
of the first practical coal-mining ma
chine a machine that has stood the
test of months, being quietly operated
in one of the larger mines of the
Pittsburg district turning out thou
sands of tons of commercial coal d.
rect from the face of the coal seam,
placing the coal in pit cars and keep
ing men on the jump to get the load
ed cars out of the way when loaded.
For years such machine has been
the dream of coal-mining companies.
1t has been needed to solve the in
creasing problem of coal mining-such
as mine disasters, increasing cost Of
labor, the growing expenditures for
mine equipment, miners homes at the
mines and countless other outlays, of
which the average citizen has little
realization.
The new mining machine is the de-
velopment of entirely new principles
in mechanical mining. 1t is the pro-
duct of H. A. Kuhn of Pittsburg, one
of the foremost mining and mechani-
cal engineers of the Pittsburg district,
who has spent more than ten years
in close application to the task which
he has at last completed, and in the
perfection of which he has expended
a fortune in development work. In
the early years of his experiments he
spent his time discovering fundamen-
tails He sought a principle upon
which a machine would work He
made this a success, and from 1t built
an economical, practical, cheap and
"foolproof" machine that does all the
work of the human miner-only it does
this twenty times as fast and so per
cent cheaper.
AS the machine stands, it is 4 struc-
tural steel frame, oblong in form,
which rents on a steering truck which
rides on the floor of the mine. 1t
carries motors for operating the cut
ting tools and the tools themselves,
and it attacks the coal seams in any
position, moving up and down, side
wise or in any direction the coal seam
when necessary. Electricity and COM
pressed air can be used in operating
the motors, and SO little pow II is re-
.-quired that the cost for this item is
less than l cent per ton of coal mined.
One peculiar feature of the machine
that impressed the spectator Is that
it seems to be fully as flexible as the
human coal miner. 1t ia estimated
that the machine will cut the cost Of
mining in half. I,. - ~.,s.
From the time the machine takes
the coal from the seam, cuts it, places
it on a conveyor and loads it in pit
car, no human hand touches it. With
twenty ordinary laborers ten of the
machines will produce 1000 tons of
coal day, as but two men are needed
to operate a machine. More than this,
the machine cuts the coal cleanly from
the roof to the floor of the mine, leav-
ing both as even as billiard table,
and it takes out in excess of 80 per
cent. of the coal in the ground; while
the best practice of to-day seldom goes
better than rs per cent. of the coal,
the rest being lost because of the too
great effort to extract it,
| Mr.. Kuhn takes exception to the
idea that any miners will be thrown
out Of, or, rather, left without en-
ployment by the introduction of the
machines. He says that 10000 addi-
tional miners are required each year
in the United States to keep pace with
the growing demand for coal, due to
the increase in population, while TO-
900 miners, 1t Is estimated. leave the
mines annually for other occupations,
thus making a demand for about co.
600 new miners each year. 1t is be-
coming more and more difficult each
year to obtain the increase mine labor
required THE inventor believes that
his machine will replace this labor,
but only in the way of reducing the
number of new men, called upon to
enter the mines each year.