Stimulants to the mining industry, metals

Mining is the backbone of all prosperity, a great entrepreneur once said. Not enough people realize the truth of this statement. Sir Isaac Newton’s discovery of the third law of motion, that for every action of a force there is an equal and opposite reaction, sometimes appears to have rough parallels in human performance and achievement and mining is prominent in this.

Taking one example, in England in the late 1500s, the increasing use of coal rather than wood (charcoal) was dictated by serious deforestation there. Wood-fire glass furnaces had actually become illegal.

The output of coal mined in Newcastle rose from 32,951 tons in 1563-64 to 529,000 tons in 1658- 59. Technological improvements were thus stimulated by this need to use more coal, but progress was not fast by our standards.

I have long had a close interest in the famous Quaker pioneer Abraham Darby (1677-1717). Darby, using Dutch brassworkers, first developed the process for smelting iron ore using coke (from coal) as the fuel in a coke-fired blast furnace in the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, Coalbrookdale, Shropshire (Salop), between 1709 and 1717. The process produced larger amounts of iron. There were deposits of iron and clay and accessible coal seams there.

This coke-smelting technique produced cheap, sturdy iron by the 1730s for casting strong, thin pots for home use, as well as larger and larger iron parts for machinery for mines and the large cylinders needed for the new steam mine pumping engines of Newcomen and that mining man’s successors.

Still, it took 50 years and various improvements by the son, Abraham Darby II (1711-63), before coke was used across industry for iron-making.

The younger Darby’s great contribution lay in developing, by the 1750s, systematic ways of making a pig iron which could be used in forges while employing coke. His contribution made possible the output of large quantities of iron and, consequently, the large shapes needed for the Industrial Revolution.

A mile away, a grandson (Darby III) built the world’s first iron bridge in 1781, a 200-ft. arch over the River Severn Gorge, which is still in use after more than 200 years.

A great stimulant to improving machines in mines was the need for much more power. Newcomen, of Cornwall’s tin mines, built the world’s first practical steam engine to pump water out of the mines by 1712 and Smeaton lowered the price of iron with his water-powered bellows in 1761. Watt improved on Newcomen’s old engine by 1785. Again we can see how metal use and mining stimulated each other.

By 1802, Richard Trevithick, born in Illogan, Cornwall, near Tehidy manor’s Camborne (of School of Metalliferous Mining fame), son of the manager of Dolcoath, the largest tin mine, had constructed the world’s first high-pressure steam engine.

In 1804, Trevithick built the world’s first steam-driven railroad locomotive to run on rails, which could initially haul 20 tons of iron. It was later used at the Wylam coal mine near Newcastle where Stephenson, developer of the 1825 world’s first public passenger train, was born.

The 1863 Siemens-Martin process for making steel ensured our modern industry.

Fortunately for mining, in 1879 Gilchrist and Thomas doubled the world’s potential steel output by making steel from phosphoric ores, a great stimulant to our industry.006 T.P. (Tom) Mohide, a former president of the Winnipeg Commodity Exchange, served as a director of mining resources with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources prior to his retirement in 1986.