Inventions in the Century

by William Henry Doolittle

Many forms of ore washing machines have been invented to treat the ore after it has been reduced to powder. These are known by various names, as jiggers, rifflers, concentrators, washing frames, etc. A stream of water is directed on, into, and through the mass of pulverised ore and dirt, the dirt and kindred materials, lighter than the ore, are raised and floated towards the top of the receptacle and carried away, while the ore settles.

This operation is frequently carried on in connection with amalgamated surfaces over which the metal is passed to still further attract and concentrate the ore. An endless apron travelling over cylinders is sometimes employed, composed of slats the surface of each of which is coated with an amalgam, and on this belt the powdered ore is spread thinly and carried forward. The vibrations of the belt tend to shake and distribute the ore particles, the amalgam attracts them, the refuse is thrown off as the belt passes down over the cylinder, while the ore particles are retained and brushed off into a proper receptacle. Amalgamators themselves form a large class of inventions. They are known as electric, lead, mercury, plate, vacuum, vapour, etc.

By the help of these and a vast number of other kindred inventions, the business of mining in all its branches has been revolutionised and transformed, even within the last half century. With the vast increase in the output of coal, and of ores, and the incalculable saving of hand labour, the number of operators has been increased in the same proportion, their wages increased, their hours of labour shortened, and their comforts multiplied in variety and quantity, with a diminished cost. The whole business of mining has been raised from ceaseless darkness and drudgery to light and dignity. Opportunity has been created for miners to become men of standing in the community in which they live; and means provided for educating their children and for obtaining comfortable homes adorned with the refinements of civilisation.

Well boring is an ancient art—known to the Egyptians and the Chinese. Wells were coeval with Abraham when his servant had the celebrated interview with Rebecca. “Jacob’s well at Sychar—the ancient Shechim—has been visited by travellers in all ages and has been minutely described. It is nine feet in diameter and one hundred and five feet deep, made entirely through rock. When visited by Maundrel it contained fifteen feet of water.”—Knight. Some kind of a drill must have been used to have cut so great a depth through rock. The Chinese method of boring wells from time immemorial has been by the use of a sharp chisel-like piece of hard iron on the end of a heavy iron and wood frame weighing four or five hundred pounds, lifted by a lever and turned by a rattan cord operated by hand, and by which wells from fifteen hundred to eighteen hundred feet in depth and five or six inches in diameter have been bored.

This method has lately been improved by attaching the chisel part, which is made very heavy, to a rope of peculiar manufacture, which gives the chisel a turn as it strikes, combined with an air pump to suck up from the hole the accumulating dirt and water.

Artesian wells appear to have first been known in Europe in the province of Artois, France, in the thirteenth century. Hence their name. The previous state of the art in Egypt, China and elsewhere was not then known.

Other modern inventions in well-making machinery have consisted in innumerable devices to supplant manual labour and to meet new conditions.

Coal Oil:—Reichenbach, the German chemist, discovered paraffine. Young, soon after, in 1850, patented paraffine oil made from coal. These discoveries, added to the long observed fact of coal oil floating on streams in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, led to the search for its natural source. The discovery of the reservoirs of petroleum in Pennsylvania in 1855-1860, and subsequently of gas, which nature had concealed for so long a time, gave a great impetus to inventions to obtain and control these riches. With earth-augurs, drills, and drill cleaning and clearing and “fishing” apparatus, and devices for creating a new flow of oil, and tubing, new forms of packing, etc., inventors created a new industry.

Colonel E. Drake sank the first oil well in Pennsylvania in 1859. Since then, 125,000 oil wells have been drilled in that and neighbouring localities. The world has seldom seen such excitement, except in California on the discovery of gold, as attended the coal oil discovery. The first wells sunk gushed thousands of barrels a day. Farmers and other labouring men went to bed poor and woke up rich. Rocky wildernesses and barren fields suddenly became Eldorados. The burning rivers of oil were a reflection of the golden treasures which flowed into the hands and pockets of thousands as from a perpetual fountain touched by some great magician’s wand.

Old methods of boring wells were too slow, and although the underlying principle was the same, the new methods and means invented enabled wells to be bored with one-tenth the labour, in one-tenth the time, and at one-tenth the cost. Many great cities and plains and deserts have been provided with these wells owing to the ease with which they can now be sunk.