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By S. F. Emmons

Jan 1, 1899

By J. F. Myers

A bit of old philosophy: The optimist, the pessimist, The difference is droll; The optimist, the doughnut sees, The pessimist, the hole. This is a neat summation of the viewpoint of those engaged in "treating the crude mineral crust of the earth." Many of those in high places have reminded us during the year of the diminishing supply of the resources so essen-

Jan 1, 1948

By George W. Friesen

This paper presents the historical trend and de- fines the causes of drilling cost escalation in the Gulf of Mexico during the 1970's. The three major components of escalation are: 1) inflation, 2) supply-demand imbalance (demand pull) and 3) decreases in drilling efficiency. The decade was divided into three periods. During each period one component of escalation was responsible for most of the rise in costs. From 1970 through 1973 only inflation pushed costs upward. During 1974 and 1975 a supply- demand imbalance caused most of the escalation. Since 1975, decreases in drilling efficiency have produced the major component of escalation. During any one year or period of years, the sum of the three components will give the total escalation rate. The reasons why different components contribute more toward escalation during certain years than others are shown by following the timing of oil and gas price increases, the overall quality of the acreage offered each year in offshore lease sales and the resulting drilling activity.

Jan 1, 1982

By C. A. Heiland

THIS year's review of geophysical activities has a somewhat different complexion than usual. With the ending of the war, the time seems opportune to supplement the customary report on operations and discoveries in oil and mine exploration by a review out-lining the contributions of geophysicists to the. war effort. To give as much space as possible to the latter, presented as Part 2, some of the usual review features have been omitted from the statistical section, given as Part 1 immediately following.

Jan 1, 1946

By Davenport, Edmund S.

THE specific aim of this work has been to study certain forms of internal deterioration which occur in tungsten filaments when subjected to high temperatures under various conditions, and to determine the cause of such deterioration. This would naturally lead to a consideration of methods of control or means of prevention of the phenomena. The deterioration was first noticed as a peculiar condition in the grain boundaries of certain tungsten filaments which had been burned t for long periods in lamps. In these cases it was noted that the grain bound aries contained a number of minute black dots which were at first thought to be non-metallic inclusions. It was demonstrated later that these dots or pits, as they were designated, could be readily produced by burning filaments in an atmosphere of flowing hydrogen. This method was convenient and adequate for the purpose, and was adopted for most of the work discussed in this paper. The evidence accumulated to date indicates that these pits arc actually small voids between the grains. The purpose of this paper is to, present the information on this interesting subject gathered during a period of about 3 years. As applied to tungsten, the subject appears to be of considerable importance, experience having shown that this pitting is frequently associated with poor performance of filaments in lamps.

Jan 1, 1927

By John A. Gann

THE Iron and Steel Division has shared in the general increased activity of the industry. The fall meeting at Chicago was not only well attended but particularly characterized by the virility and scope of the discussions at the various sessions. The program for the February meeting indicates a similar interest in technological developments. The Blast-Furnace Committee continues to have the hearty support of the industry with discussions of such a nature as to be of real help to the operator as well ass the technologist. The work of the Open-Hearth Committee continues to be outstanding, with ever increasing attendance and ever mounting interest in the meetings. Formation of a conference on the physical chemistry of steelmaking has given those interested in this phase of work an organization allowing the same

Jan 1, 1936

By C. H. Mathewson

MY treatment of the subject of "Metals of the Future" is imaginative rather than statistical or scientific, because reliable information concerning useful concentrations in the form of ore deposits of by far the majority of the elements does not exist and the chemical, physical, and mechanical properties of the unfamiliar metals are recorded only in fragmentary and uncertain form or not at all.

Jan 1, 1944

By Charles Albert Ashburner

The coal-fields of the United States have been variously classified as to their geographical positions. In 1887 I proposed slight changes to the classification generally used, for more convenient description of our coal-fields in my report on the statistical history of coal in the States during 1886 for the United States Geological Survey. This new classification seems to meet all practical requirements and has been generally adopted. The coal-areas are grouped in two divisions—the anthracite division and the bituminous division. The anthracite division, in a commercial sense, may be said to include the anthracite districts of Pennsylvania alone, although small amounts of anthracite are mined in Colorado and have been

Jan 1, 1890

By Axel Sahlin

Jan 1, 1898

By Thomas Henderson

Strategically, intermaterials competition is important to companies involved in raw materials extraction, smelting, refining or other processing, semi-finished and finished goods fabrication, and end-use consumers. In other words, just about every company involved in manufacturing. The array of materials covered by other papers in this session is testimony to the subject's breadth. In trying to provide an over- view of such a broad topic, the purpose has been to relate some of the common characteristics of the markets, economics and technology of raw materials, and to describe some of the ways in which Intermaterials competition impacts the markets, economics and technology of raw materials.

Jan 1, 1982

By J. W. Byrkit

Design features and operating methods at the new Ajo smelter are described in detail. Successful operation of a novel method of handling and charging wet concentrates to a deep bath type reverberatory furnace contribute to the daily production of 200 tons of anodes with good results from the standpoint of both metallurgy and economy. THE New Cornelia Branch of the Phelps Dodge Corp. is located at Ajo, Ariz. Large scale mining operations were started at Ajo in 1917, when a 5000 ton leaching plant was put in service to treat the copper carbonate ore that overlaid the sulphide ore-body. In 1924 a 5000 ton flotation plant was built to treat the sulphide ore and the leaching operation was abandoned a few years later. Changes in practice and additions to plant facilities have resulted in a gradual increase in the milling rate which now approaches 30,000 tons daily. Prior to the erection of the Ajo smelter, flotation concentrate was shipped by rail to Douglas, Ariz, where it was treated in the Phelps Dodge smelter. Construction of a one reverberatory furnace smelter to produce an average of about 200 tons per day of copper anodes at Ajo was started early in 1949. Initial heating of the reverberatory furnace was begun on June 21, 1950. Charging the furnace was started on july 8, and the first anodes were cast on July 14. Neither the anode furnace nor the reverberatory furnace has cooled since the initial firing. Fig. 1 is a photograph of the new smelter. Built primarily to eliminate the '300 mile haul of concentrate to the Douglas plant, the new smelter was designed to treat the Ajo concentrate, with a minimum of capital investment. A novel, and relatively simple, method of concentrate handling and furnace charging made unnecessary the installation and operation of expensive storage facilities and reclaiming equipment, and obviated the necessity of holding in storage large quantities of copper-bearing materials. (Patents are pending in the United States and abroad on the Ajo process.) In the selection and arrangement of equipment, consideration was given to the full utilization of all smelting facilities, reducing the amount of idle equipment to a minimum. The layout of the smelter is shown in Fig. 2. The important problem of internal transportation was minimized by arranging the reverberatory furnace, converters, and anode furnace in a compact group and providing storage bins inside the smelter building, within reach of overhead cranes, for fluxing materials and other supplies needed in the daily operation. This can be seen in the sectional view of the smelter given in Fig. 3. Incorporated in the design were many innovations in smelting equipment intended to facilitate operations and effect economies in maintenance expense and manpower requirements. Table I gives operating data of the entire plant. Metallurgy The metallurgical practice at Ajo is based essentially upon the use of a single, deep bath reverberatory furnace for smelting wet concentrate, without concentrate storage facilities. The large reservoir of slag and matte maintained in the furnace serves to equalize, to some extent, the day to day variations in the nature and grade of concentrate and permits

Jan 1, 1954

By C. L. Dake

AN insistent and steadily growing demand is evident for the broadening of undergraduate curricula in engineering. Among suggested additions are training in public speaking, report writing, business law and contracts, accounting, finance, money and banking, scientific management, economics, social and labor problems, psychology, and ethics. The demand for these subjects comes from the older engineers and from the industries that employ our graduates. Of course, many of the men who suggest such changes are influenced largely by their personal needs and contacts, but the demand is sufficiently widespread to merit serious study by educators. In fact, many educators themselves concur in the proposals for broader training. These matters were examined intensively a few years ago in an exhaustive study of engineering education. Opinion at that time was rather strongly against any profound change. Since then, however, the whole economic system has undergone violent disruption. Even if recommendations made a few years ago were appropriate to the conditions then- obtaining, the enormously changed conditions of the present make advisable a further careful study of this problem. In recent years, mergers, to reduce costs, have sharply limited the number of engineers employed and have thereby intensified the struggle to secure positions. In this stiffer competition, engineers with the most adequate training undoubtedly fare the best.

Jan 1, 1934

By Paul Weir

FOR the first time in 1938, bituminous coal production for the week ending Nov. 19 surpassed that of the corresponding week in 1937, and indexes of industrial activity indicated the possibility that the remaining weeks of 1938 would run ahead of the corresponding weeks of the preceding year. But regardless of this year-end pickup, total production in 1938 was approximately 25 per cent less than in 1937. The estimate of 340 million tons for 1938 places the bituminous industry slightly above the production level of 1933 and approximately 10 per cent above the modem low of 1932. Anthracite production is not subject to the same extent as is bituminous coal to fluctuations arising out of the rate of industrial activity, hence the decline from 1937 has not been so great being approximately 14 per cent under 1937. The estimate for 1938 production is approximately 45 million tons, but this represents the lowest level reached in the last fifty years with the possible exception of several strike years.

Jan 1, 1939

By John A. Baker

S EVERAL FACTORS have brought about a vastly greater interest in the gold-mining industry in the last two or three years. Outstanding is the fact that there is an open market at a fixed price for all that can be produced. a condition that holds for no other commodity. Costs of production have decreased greatly, owing to lower prices of supplies and equipment and lower wages. Improved metallurgical processes and equipment are also available. To big new gold district is being opened up but virgin ground is being prospected with some success in many of the more remote parts of the world and right here in the United States many old properties are being reopened 111 the light of present condition<, tailing dumps are being re- worked, and profitable leases taken on abandoned property. Many of the men who are becoming interested in gold are mining engineers whose experience has all been with base metals heretofore: some are engineers with no mining experience; some are not engineers at all but men who cannot find profitable employment in their usual field of activity and are attracted by the age-old lore of the yellow metal. Some are business men with a little money and an idea that under present conditions gold mining offers a safer investment for it than most other kinds of business. It is to those more or less inexperienced new- comers in the gold-mining industry that this article i4 ad dressed. Those who are connected with the large gold mines or who have had rears of experience with the small ones will find in the following pages little or nothing of interest but it is hoped that the newer generation of small mine operators, on whom the healthy growth of the industry depends so much, may find here some helpful hints.

Jan 1, 1932

By Persifor Frazer

INTRODUCTION For various reasons I have not specified the locality where the research indicated in the following pages was undertaken. It will suffice to say that it was on the grounds of a villa once remote from, but now completely surrounded by, its neighboring city, and in close proximity to an industrial establishment of great extent and importance manufacturing many kinds of steel articles and employing upwards of thirty chimney-stacks for power and process work. The problem was to discover the cause or causes of the mortality to trees and plants on the place, and to trace these causes to their origin. Before undertaking this experimental work, the bibliography accompanying this paper was compiled and studied. It appears from an examination of the careful scientific work performed by the ablest French, German, and English chemists during the last 25 years that they are unanimous in assigning the principal-in fact, the overwhelmingly predominant-cause of the destruction of vegetation to sulphur oxides, resulting either from direct- oxidation of sulphur in oil of vitriol works, etc., or from the oxidation of the sulphur from the minerals associated with commercial coal. Schröder and Schertel showed in 1884 that the sulphates deposited upon the leaves are not injurious to the plants; and Freytag proved that free sulphuric acid could not be found

May 1, 1907

By E. H. Rose

IN the realm of ore dressing the most pregnant feat of all time was announced in 1945: the winning of the mineral raw materials which made the harnessing of atomic energy possible. Lost in the stupendous implications of the end result, in the two billion dollar hugeness of the project, and in the famous names attached thereto, the fact that crude uranium ores had to be concentrated received relatively little notice in the press. Only the final link in the concentrating chain was publicized-ether extraction of uranyl nitrate, developed by Hoffman and carried on by the Mallinckrodt Chemical Works, or methods developed by the Ames group under Spedding. Some of the earlier links represented less glamorous but equally difficult and exacting research. One may only speak a word of admiration for those who worked hard, accomplished much, and said nothing. The universal lament for most of the year was "man shortage." A group of Canadian engineers expressed it as "being so short of labor that no labor was available to develop laborsaving devices." . Despite this, an outstanding amount of mineral-dressing progress was made in 1945. Necessity allowed no alternative. The insatiable demand of war for minerals forced the exploitation of lower and lower grade ores, and of others not before considered of commercial character or use, requiring the mineral dresser to fight for and win new bridgeheads on the home front.

Jan 1, 1946

By C. Q. Payne

(New York Meeting, February, 1912.) THE art of crushing ores and other materials by means of rolls is a comparatively recent one. While the first record of rolls using iron crushing-surfaces dates back to the year 1806, when they were employed in Cornwall, their principal development has taken place during the last 30 years. To Stephen R. Krom belongs the credit of the pioneer in introducing the belted high-speed roll, which has had its origin and a marked development in this country. His notable contribution to the art was in the use of a single bed-plate or frame supporting the roll-shafts, and to which levers holding the movable roll-bearings were pivoted. He also made use of steel tension-rods to support the crushing-strains, and of hammered-steel tires for the crushing-surfaces. These changes brought the design of crushing-rolls to a high level. Following closely thereon, about 1885, W. R. Eckart conceived the idea of the swivel or ball-and-socket support for the roll-shaft bearings. This is an excellent mechanical conception, especially for bearings held against a spring pressure, and while it may not be necessary for all types of rolls, yet it has been quite generally adopted by other roll-designers, and illustrates the refinement which roll-construction has now reached. Other engineers, as for example, Argall, Vezin, Roger, and Sturtevant, to mention only a few among many, have also given the closest attention to the various details of rolls, such as the frame, springs, bearings, and shafts, and have developed many novel and original designs. It has remained, however, for the boldness and originality of Mr. Edison to extend the field of crushing-rolls in two new directions, and to cause them to exercise new functions. In developing crushing-machinery for his Portland cement works, Mr. Edison constructed ? giant " rolls, having a diameter of 6 ft. and a length of. face of 7 ft.

Jun 1, 1912

By Leon Dominian

(Wilkes-Barre Meeting, June, 1911.) I. INTRODUCTION. THE lack of Aryan roots for the names of metals commonly known among the Aryan settlers of Asia Minor, as well as the later colonizers of Europe, indicates that these races were generally ignorant of the use of metals until they came into contact with Semitic peoples. Practically all mining-terms in current use among the earliest Greeks resemble very strongly their distinctly Semitic equivalents, which can be traced all the way in a broad belt beginning in Lower Mesopotamia, and extending westwardly to the Syrian shores of the Mediterranean. The Greek word " "metallon," for instance, used indiscriminately to designate mine or ore, probably came from the earlier Semitic equivalent, " matal." Again, the Greek words " chrysos " (gold) and " chalkos " (copper) seem to be descended from the Semitic forms " throats " and a chalak." It is a natural inference that primitive mining-methods were evolved by the dwellers in the mineralized areas of Asia Minor, from whom later Greek, Roman, and even North European miners obtained their first notions of the reduction of metallic ores, by virtue of a general westward migration of mining and metallurgy. Some traces of its passage through Turkish territory will be noted in this paper. While European Turkey can boast of one ancient gold-field, the Asiatic dominions of the Sultan may lay claim to at least two well-defined and widely-separated gold-producing districts. These three regions may be distinguished as the Thracian, the Pontic, and the Anatolian gold-fields. II. TURKEY IN EUROPE. . The Thracian Gold-Field. The most conspicuous topographic feature of the lowland between Constantinople and Salonica is the uplifted Archaean

Nov 1, 1911

By GORDON H. FISHER

During the year 1945, the drilling pace in West Texas increased above that in the year 1944, and represented the highest number of well completions since 2941. The 1680 new wells drilled 8,287,958 ft. of hole for a per well average of 4933 ft. This depth is approximately 30o. ft. deeper than the average for the year 1944. Although the deepest well drilled in West Texas (Phillips Petroleum Company&apos;s Ada Price No. 1, in Pecos County) was completed during the year. 1944 to a depth of 15,279 ft. and tested the Ellen-burger horizon, the producing depth record for West Texas was set during the year 1945 with the completion of Amerada Petroleum Corporation&apos;s Jones No. I-A, in the Jones Ranch field, Gaines County, which now is producing at 11,422 ft. from the Devonian formation.

Jan 1, 1946

By Henry D. Hibbard

A NOTED ordnance engineer once said to a friend, in speaking of the production of great steel guns, "How is it? We design our guns with a factor of safety of eight, and the guns burst." The vague way in which internal stresses and strains in iron and steel are often considered and spoken of makes it worth-while to examine them, as to their nature, their causes and results, how they may, for useful purposes, be advantageously dealt with, and how, when detrimental or dangerous, they may be reduced or kept within harmless proportions. Rankine defines ?strain " as a change of form or dimensions of a solid or liquid mass produced by a stress. This definition seems not intended to cover strains due to internal stresses, and it will help us in the present inquiry to consider strain as a tendency to change as well as an actual change of form. Internal strains in iron and steel are the result of stresses within the mass of the piece, some parts pulling and others pushing in resistance to them; or, in other words, some parts are in tension and some in compression, each part striving to relieve itself from strain and make the piece assume a form in which all parts are at rest. Subdivision, so that each part could relieve its strain by motion relative to the other parts, would, if carried out far enough, practically obliterate strain. The internal strains we are now to consider are not those due to the stresses of the service which the piece is rendering, either alone or as, a part of a structure, which may be termed service-strains, but those which originate or at least are contained in the piece itself. Internal stresses in a piece of metal are, like action and reaction, always equal and in opposite directions. The stresses

Sep 1, 1906