Mine Pumping in Agricola's Time and Later

by Robert P. Multhauf

Figure 5.—Reverse of Medal shown in [figure 4]. (Photo courtesy of Stadtisches Museum, Braunschweig.)

The resemblance of the German term for bag (Bulge) to the Latin term for bucket (bulga) instead of the Latin term for bag (canalis), and the presence of buckets (Kübeln), bags (Bulgen), pockets (Taschen), or cans (Kannen) as components of three of Agricola’s four categories of hauling machines are reasons enough for the apparent superfluity of German names, if not for his decision to avoid the use of German names. But it should also be noted that the names sometimes refer to a pump and its prime mover considered as a single machine. Such is the case with the Kehrrad, a bucket windlass driven by a reversible waterwheel which Agricola describes as his largest hauling machine.[10]

Agricola describes 23 hauling devices of these four types, the diversity resulting generally from the application of three types of prime movers, men, horses, and waterwheels, and in the endowment of each in turn with a mechanical advantage in the form of gearing.[11] Although he does not specify clearly the relative importance of the various pumps, the majority (13) use man as the prime mover. He speaks of the advantages of some, noting that the horse whim has a power two and a half times that of the man windlass, and emphasizing the even greater power available in flowing water “when a running stream can be diverted to a mine.” The most powerful machine then in use for deep mines appears to have been the horse-powered rag and chain pump.

Such, then, were the important mining machines of this early period of deep mining, according to the leading authority. But did they continue, as has been claimed, to be the only important machines of the subsequent century? G. E. Lohneyss,[12] writing a little over a half century after the publication of De re metallica, declared:

The old miners [alten Bergleute] had Heintzen, Kerratt, Bulgenkunst, Taschen-kunst, Pumpen, with which one lifted water with cans on pulleys or with a treadmill; and they devised and constructed these in which the poor people moved like cattle and wore themselves out. At that time they had powerful machines (Kunst) using swift water, although it cost much to erect and maintain them, and was very dangerous since an iron chain of a Bulgenkunst alone often weighed 200 centner [over 10 tons] and more.

But today’s artisan [jetzigen Künstler] far surpasses the old ... since we have in the present time invented many other mining machines; such as the Stangenkunst mit dem krummen Zapffen, which raises water at small cost over 100 Lachter [562 feet].

Figure 6.—Stangenkunst, Showing Driving Wheel, Feldkunst, and Kunstkreuz. From H. Calvör (see footnote 15).

The Stangenkunst, which can be roughly translated as “rod work with crank,” was a piston pump driven through a crank and rods by a prime mover located at a distant point. Agricola describes a crank-driven piston pump, calling it a new machine invented ten years earlier.[13] But it is not driven bya distant prime mover. Like his other water-powered hauling machines it can only be used “when a running stream can be diverted to a mine.” So far as we can determine from internal evidence, Agricola did not know the Stangenkunst.