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William Clinton Brown, Brooklyn, N. Y.: The demand for an apparatus for cooling water for condensers, refrigeratingmachinery and air-compressors, as well as water-jacketed furnaces, has led manufacturers to put such an apparatus on the market, so that it is now possible to purchase a cooling-tower, properly designed and constructed, by simply stating the amount of water to be cooled and the temperatures of the hot and the cold water. The principle is similar to that described by Mr. Henrich, but wood is not used in the best apparatus. There are two great objections to wood: First, it cannot last long under the very trying conditions to which it is subjected; and second, it absorbs the organic matter with which water in constant use becomes impregnated, and the resulting odor is very disagreeable. A few days ago I saw a cooling-tower and condenser, built by the Henry R. Worthington Co., in operation at the Edison electric-lighting station in Brooklyn, N. Y., cooling the water for a 700 horse-power condenser. It consisted of a large stack of iron, about 15 feet in diameter by about 30 feet high. This stack was filled with tiling through which the water falls. A whirligig distributes the water evenly over the top, and a large fan, about 6 feet in diameter, driven by a 10 horse-power electric motor, blows air into the bottom, thus giving a positive circulation. The water, in running down the sides of the tiling, is met by the blast of air, and enough is evaporated to cool the rest. The vacuum-gauge on the condenser showed 26 inches; so the condenser was undoubtedly getting sufficient cool water.

Jan 1, 1896

Jan 1, 1896

I;. D. Godshall, Everett, Wash. (communication to the Secretary) : In Mr. Morse's interesting paper several statements occur which seem to require correction and comment. This is the more appropriate, since Mr. Morse has mentioned me by name, and has cited my "Review of the Russell Process,"* so that silence on my part might be taken as indicating an assent which I cannot give. On the first page of his paper Mr. Morse says that the " goingback " of chlorination was " the only difficulty encountered at Aspen," and adds that he has " never seen any explanation " of the cause. The plain inference is that he now fills this complete

Jan 1, 1896

William B. Phillips, Birmingham, Ala.: The analysis of Pratt coal made by myself, and given by Mr. Ormsbee in his paper (p. 113), is likely to mislead the reader as to the real nature of this coal. It represents the very purest coal that I have been able to get, and does not represent the average composition of the lump-coal as prepared for market. I wish it were true that the coal had no more than 2.50 ash and 0.83 sulphur. The analysis of McCalley is nearer the real figures than any of the others. There is no use in giving an

Jan 1, 1896

John Birkinbine, Philadelphia, Pa.: Mr. Sperry's paper is certainly a valuable addition to the literature upon alloys with iron, supplementing the data already published concerning the influence of manganese, chromium, tungsten, titanium, aluminium, etc.; and it is to be hoped that the presentation of information upon the influences of nickel may bring out comparisons with other alloys. Taking into consideration the properties of nickel, and its use as an alloy in heavy forgings, as set forth in the paper, there would appear to be no serious difficulties in utilizing this alloy by extending its application to pieces of more moderate size. The melting-temperature of nickel, as stated by Mr. Sperry, is considerably lower than those given by various authorities. Its point of fusion being so near that of iron, and its density but little greater, the difficulty of alloying it in the foundry should not be serious, particularly if it is applied as a ferro-nickel. The addition of nickel monoxide (NiO) to molten steel would appear to be less desirable than the application of metallic, nickel or of ferro-nickel, if such is produced on a commercial scale and at a satisfactory price.

Jan 1, 1896

T. M. Drown, South Bethlehem, Pa.: Mr. Thackray's paper shows in a striking way the high degree of rapidity and ac curacy exhibited by the chemists of our steel-works in ordinary everyday practice. That determinations made in an hour should present only slight differences in the third place of deci male is certainly matter for surprise and congratulation. This remarkable result has been due, perhaps, in part, to a remark able cause. The managers of works, ignorant of all the diffi culties of the laboratory, have demanded "the impossible " of their chemists—and the chemists have done it! Andrew A. Blair, Philadelphia, Pa.: Mr. Thackray's paper is extremely interesting, especially in its bearing on the question of a standard method for the rapid determination of phosphorus in the laboratories of steel-works. Before discussing the re sults in general, I desire to explain the results obtained by me under method A'. This is the method which I have used in the work of the sub-committee on Methods of the Interna tional Steel Standards Committee. It may be described briefly as follows: Solution in nitric acid; oxidation of carbonaceous matter by permanganate; precipitation of phosphoric acid by molybdate solution; reduction of molybdic acid in the reductor, and titra tion by permanganate. This method was used apparently by only three chemists, Dr. Dudley, Mr. Crowell, and myself. In determining phosphorus by this method, among the most essential points to be considered are the ratio of iron to molyb dic acid, or the reducing action of zinc on molybdic acid as compared to its reducing action on iron, and the ratio of molyb dic acid to phosphorus in the ammonium phospho-molybdate obtained by precipitation from the solution of the steel. In regard to the first point, the usually accepted ratio is 1 to 0.90756, or, as it is roughly stated, 0.9076, which is based on the assumed reduction of the molybdic acid to Mo12019,. This

Jan 1, 1896

F. E. Thompson, Pottstown, Pa.: If Mr. Webster's endeavor to open up the subject of cast-iron should prove as prolific of results as did the discussion on " The Physics of Steel," he must certainly feel richly repaid. His remarks concerning the secretiveness and conservatism of the average foundry-man recall to my mind an instance of a blast-furnace which, for the last year, has been producing much foundry-iron. The manager, believing that much more of his product could be used in the foundry than the foundry-men were will-

Jan 1, 1896

By William B. Phillips

The concentration of natural magnetites has been carried on in this country for several years, and more or less information has been collected on the subject. Various inventors, availing themselves of the magnetism which is inherent in such ores, have devised machines for separating the impurities from the ore by means of the electric current; and a greater or less degree of success has rewarded their painstaking and persevering efforts. We are now fairly in position to judge of the value of the process as applied to such material. It is not my purpose to speak of this matter further than may be required by the emergencies of the case. I shall assume that most engineers and metallurgical chemists are already acquainted with what has been done at the Chateaugay mines, at Mineville, at the Benson mines, at the Weldon and Ogdensburgh mines, and at Cranberry; although, at this latter place, there has not been so much done as we could wish. I shall not now speak of the various types of separators. From the time of William Fullarton, to whom was granted an English patent, in 1792, for separating iron-ore by the application of magnetic attraction, down to the present time, a great. many devices have been suggested, and a great many patents taken out for this purpose; but it is not necessary now to enter upon a discussion of their merits. Perhaps, at some future meeting of the Institute, after we shall have experimented further with some of the machines on the market, there may be an opportunity to contribute something to the current knowledge of the efficiency and economy of separating-machines. In this paper I propose to give, as briefly as possible, the results already reached in converting a non-magnetic ore into magnetic ore, and then concentrating it over a magnetic separator of the alternate-polarity type. I am aware of the work

Jan 1, 1896

By J. A. Holmes

It is a fact that is coming to be more widely recognized by the general public, as well as by members of the medical fraternity, that the health of persons living in our hill-country depends in no small degree upon the drinking water obtained, just as it has been found that the* use of pure water in the lowlands and swamp-areas of the Southern States results in practical immunity from malarial diseases. Hence the problem, how to obtain supplies of wholesome water for the towns and manufacturing establishments in the hill-country or Piedmont plateau-region of the Southeastern States, becomes one of considerable interest, the importance of which will continue to increase, as the favorable conditions for manufactures and agriculture in this region will make it, in the near future, the most thickly populated portion of the South Atlantic States. Water-supplies from Surface-streams are unquestionably of the first importance; and in the mountain counties, where the region is still largely forest-covered and the streams are swift and continually aerated by rapids and cascades, the water is of superior purity and clearness. This statement is also applicable to the more elevated and sparsely settled portions of the Piedmont plateau; but in the less hilly and more thickly settled portions of this region the streams are more sluggish, and the waters more muddy and less pure, owing to the fact that a much larger proportion of the surface is under cultivation.

Jan 1, 1896

By Courtenay de Kalb

The following observations upon onyx-marbles are fragmentary, and may shortly be rendered superfluous by the appearance of a work upon these interesting stones by Prof. George

Jan 1, 1896

By Harvey S. Chase

During the recent great depression in iron, little has been done in the magnetic separation of iron-ores; and previous to the present decade the art was in its infancy, so that there were few, if any, successful separators on the market, and but scanty practical data could be obtained as to the industry itself. Moreover, the recent development of the great Mesabi Bessemer beds, coincident with the intense depression in business, has discouraged active attempts to solve the problems presented in the crushing and separation of the refractory magnetites of the South. Experiments have been carried on, however, upon a practical scale in separating these ores magnetically, at the well-known Cranberry mines, in Mitchell county, N. C., with results which are encouraging. The magnetites of the Blue Ridge, in the South, have been known, and the soft ores of the region have been used in Catalan forges, since very early times. The original settlements in East Tennessee were made along the Watauga river by Daniel Boone, William Bean, John Sevier, and other stalwart pioneers; and this valley lies parallel with the " Cranberry " lead, which is undoubtedly the most celebrated and the most extensive deposit of workable magnetic ore in the Southern States. This lead I have personally traced along the outcrop, be-

Jan 1, 1896

By Robert W. Hunt

In 1888 the writer had the honor of submitting to the Institute a paper on " Steel Rails and Specifications for their Manufacture."* In his judgment the specifications were sufficient for "that day and generation." In that paper I said: '' The first duty falls upon the railroad engineer in designing his section. If that is bad, the steel-maker will be heavily handicapped in trying to furnish a satisfactory rail. I suppose it is hopeless to expect the adoption of standard sections."

Jan 1, 1896

By Graham MacFarlane

The eastern coal-field of Kentucky covers about 11,000 square miles of territory. On the east and south it extends to the State lines of West Virginia, Virginia and Tennessee. Its western boundary may be roughly described as an irregular line beginning at the Ohio river, in Greenup county, thence through the counties of Carter, Menifee, Wolfe, Estill, Jackson, Rockcastle, Pulaski and Wayne, to the Tennessee line. The changes in the rock-intervals and in the coal-seams from the northeastern end of the field to the south and southeastern end are so great that no satisfactory identification of the coals has yet been made, and the correlation of the Kentucky coals

Jan 1, 1896

By William Glenn

The Ritchie vein, of Ritchie county, W. Va.,* was a straight fissure, about 3600 feet in length, which cut vertically downward across the horizontal beds of shale and of sandstone to a depth not ascertained. It might be described as lying in a. Vertical plane, bearing 12 degrees north of west. The geological horizon is that of the " upper barren coal measures'" of the Appalachian coal-field, being a part of the strata lying above the Pittsburgh bed. The vein matter was declared by Prof.

Jan 1, 1896

By Henry Lloyd Smyth, J. Ralph Finlay

The most important area of the so-called Keewatin rocks of northern Minnesota is that which runs westerly from Lake Saganaga, near the national boundary, and finally disappears beneath the drift (or has not been farther traced), in the neighborhood of Vermilion Lake. With this belt we have a general acquaintance, extending back some four years. During the past year we have had the opportunity of studying in considerable detail a small part of it, embracing an area of about 12 square miles on the south and east shores of Vermilion Lake. In this paper we desire to record our observations and conclusions, which seem to us important. II.—Literature. Outside the Minnesota Geological Survey, the list of the investigators who have studied the geology of the Vermilion Lake area is not long. Whittlesey, in 1876,* mentioned the occurrence, in the area about Vermilion Lake, of rocks resembling the Canadian Laurentian. Chester,? in 1884, described the iron-ore at Vermilion Lake as occurring in connection with jasper and quartzite, intimately bedded with the country-rock, chiefly sericite schist, and standing in a nearly vertical attitude. The Vermilion iron-bearing rocks, and those of the Mesabi range, he says, are of the same age.

Jan 1, 1896

By William M. Brewer

History.—The history of gold-mining in Georgia and Alabama antedates the discovery of gold in California. A very large proportion of the gold used in the United States previous to 1849 was produced by these States. A great deal of this history is merely tradition, and no reliable statistics can be obtained ; yet a personal examination of the gold-fields of Georgia and Alabama indicates that tradition is as fairly reliable, with regard to the history of these gold-regions, as it is in any similar cases throughout the world. In Georgia, the history of gold-mining dates back to 1829, when the first gold-mining excitement in the United States occurred. In Alabama, the discovery of gold was made some years later through the work of prospectors, incited by the rich finds in the Georgia mining camps. The greatest product of gold in these States was between the years 1840 and 1849. In Lumpkin county, Ga., and Cleburne county, Ala., the districts from which the most of this gold was taken, the tailing-dumps are silent witnesses of the extensive operations which were carried on by the primitive and crude methods then known. It is no rare thing to see trees 12 to 15 inches in diameter, and even

Jan 1, 1896

By Clinton M. Ball

Magnetic iron-ore is found in many localities throughout this and other countries, in large bodies and in convenient proximity to other materials required for its conversion into iron and steel; and these bodies of ore would have great commercial value on account of their nearness to consuming markets if they were generally suitable in their natural state for use in the larger operations of steel-making. In the manufacture of iron and steel it has been found, however, that not all ores are equally valuable as sources of raw material for the finished products of furnace, forge and foundry; and, as is now well understood, this is because of the intrusion, in the process of formation of the ore-bodies, of substances which can enter into deleterious combinations with the iron itself, or form compounds associated with the iron oxide which will hinder, if they do not altogether prevent, the production therefrom of the higher grades of finished metal. It is only since the development of the modern method of steel-making by the Bessemer process that the art of the chemist has been called to a critical study of the nature and effect produced by the presence of these pernicious substances in the furnace while the iron is undergoing reduction to the metallic state. Phosphorus and sulphur are the most common and obnoxious elements, and the admixture of one or the other, or both of these, in small percentages and varying proportions, will greatly modify the final results of manufacture. It so happens that generally, although not always, these hurtful elements are found in compounds in the ore which are not magnetic, and this circumstance has led to the expenditure of much ingenuity and money over a long period of time, in attempts to utilize the attractive power of magnets to separate the magnetic oxide of iron out of its crushed ores and from sands, in

Jan 1, 1896

By C. A. Mezger

These districts are limited approximately on the north by the railroad from Salisbury to Ashville, and comprises the counties of Alexander, Catawba, Burke, Rutherford, McDowell, Cleveland, Lincoln, Polk and Henderson in North Carolina, and Greenville, Spartanburg, Union and York in South Carolina. The occurrence of monazite at Amelia Court House, in Virginia, belongs evidently to the same geological system, as its distance from the Alleghenies corresponds with that of the above-mentioned districts, and all the stratification runs parallel with those mountains.

Jan 1, 1896

By H. A. J. Wilkens, H. B. C. Nitze

From time to time papers treating of specific cases of Southern gold-mines and mining have appeared in the Transactions of this Institute, as well as in other journals and publications. Mr. George I?. Becker, of the United States Geological Survey, made a reconnaissance of the Southern Appalachian gold-belt during the fall of 1894; the results of his investigations are published under the title of "A Reconnoissance of the GoldFields of the Southern Appalachians," in the Sixteenth Annual Report of the Director of the United States Geological Survey, 1894-95 : Part III., " Mineral Resources of the United States." Mr. Becker has treated the subject mainly in a scientific geological manner. We present this paper to the members of the Institute as requested by the Secretary last May, with the object of covering the ground from a more practical and technical standpoint. The notes for this paper were made in a large measure from personal observations, gained chiefly during the past summer on a trip through the field. In connection with this trip we collected a suite of typical hand-specimens, representing the gold-ores and wall-rock from the more important localities. This collection forms a part of the exhibit

Jan 1, 1896

By L. U. Spellman

Atlantic Cement Company's new multimillion dollar, 10,000,000 barrel per year cement plant went into full operation in February, 1962, bringing into reality a new concept in the distribution of Portland cement. The Cerro and Newmont Mining Corporations, well established in the mineral extraction and dressing industry, backed the venture. To take advantage of the, economics inherent in single production units of large capacity, it was necessary to first find a market' capable of absorbing such large quantities. Cement can be economically shipped by rail and truck about 200 miles. Beyond' that radius from the producing facility the freight costs become prohibitive. No single marker area within that radius exists which could absorb such a large volume of cement. However, water transportation provides a relatively inexpensive method of transporting bulk products many times over such a distance. Thus, it was decided to locate the producing facility near a deep water port which had ready access both to the Atlantic Ocean and, just as important, a good source of raw material. An extensive feasibility study was made and the site at Ravena, New York on the Hudson River near Albany was chosen. Here, vast quantities of limestone in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains are found within a short distance of-the deep-water Hudson River.

Jan 1, 1964