School of mines

A school of mines (or mining school) is a term used for many engineering schools established in the 18th and 19th centuries that originally focused on mining engineering and applied science. Most no longer primarily teach mining-related subjects, although some have retained the name.

Universities offering degrees in mining engineering

North America

United States (ABET-accredited Mining Engineering)

* University of Alaska Fairbanks, College of Engineering and Mines, Fairbanks, Alaska
* University of Arizona, Department of Mining & Geological Engineering, Tucson
* Colorado School of Mines, Mining Engineering, Golden, CO
* University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY
* Missouri University of Science and Technology (formerly the Missouri School of Mines & Metallurgy), Rolla, Missouri
* Montana Tech of the University of Montana (formerly Montana School of Mines), Butte, MT
* University of Nevada, Reno (formerly The Mackay School of Mines) Reno, Nevada
* New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, Socorro, New Mexico
* Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA
* Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, Carbondale, IL
* University of Utah, Department of Mining Engineering, Salt Lake City, Utah
* Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA
* West Virginia University, in Morgantown, WV
* South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, Rapid City, SD

United States (non ABET-accredited or other programs)

* Michigan Technological University, Houghton, Michigan, offers a graduate program (MS and PhD) in Mining Engineering
* South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, Rapid City, SD, offers a degree in Mining Engineering and Management.

Canada

* Lassonde Mineral Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario
* McGill University, Montreal
* Norman B. Keevil Institute of Mining Engineering, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver and Kelowna
* Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario
* Mining Engineering, Laurentian University, Sudbury, Ontario
* University of Alberta, School of Mining & Petroleum Engineering,Edmonton, Alberta
* Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia

Europe

* Imperial College London
* University of Glamorgan (formerly the Welsh School of Mines), Pontypridd, Glamorgan, UK
* Camborne School of Mines, Cornwall, United Kingdom
* Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Géologie, Nancy
* Ecole des Mines, Paris
* École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Saint-Étienne, Saint-Étienne, France
* Groupe des écoles des mines, seven engineering schools in France
* Technische Universität Bergakademie Freiberg, Freiberg, Germany, the oldest Academy of Mining in the world, founded in 1765
* Faculty of Mining and Geology, University of Belgrade, Serbia
* Faculty of Mining, Geology and Petroleum Engineering, University of Zagreb, Croatia
* Faculty of Mining and Geology, Silesian University of Technology, Gliwice, Poland
* Faculty of Geoengineering, Mining and Geology, Wroclaw University of Technology, Wroclaw, Poland
* Instituto Superior Técnico da Universidade Técnica de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal
* Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros de Minas de Madrid, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
* Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros de Minas de Oviedo/Escuela Téunica d'Inxenieros de Mines d'Uviéu, Universidad de Oviedo/Universidá d'Uviéu, Oviedo/Uviéu, Spain
* Helsinki University of Technology, Helsinki, Finland
* Technische Universiteit Delft, Delft, The Netherlands
* Department of Natural Resources, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
* Faculty of Mining Engineering and Metallurgy, National Technical University of Athens, Greece
* Moscow State Mining University, Russia
* Saint Petersburg Mining Institute, Saint Petersburg, Russia
* Faculty of Mines, Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey

Africa

* University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa
* University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa
* University of Dar-es-salaam, Tanzania
* The Mohammadia School of Engineering, Department of Mineral Engineering, Rabat, Morocco
* Department of Mining Engineering, University of Zimbabwe, Harare, Zimbabwe
* School of Mines, Bulawayo Polytechnic College and National University of Science and Technology, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe
* Zimbabwe School of Mines, Killarney, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe

South America



* Escola Politécnica, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
* Department of Mining Engineering, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil
* Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto (formerly Escola de Minas de Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais, Brazil
* Faculdade de Engenharia, Universidade do Estado de Minas Gerais , João Monlevade, Brazil
* Department of Mining Engineering , University Federal of Pernambuco (UFPE), Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil.
* Department of Mining Engineering, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
* Department of Mining Engineering, Universidade Federal da Bahia, Salvador, Bahia, Brazil
* Facultad de Ingenieria de Minas, Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru (PUCP)
* Escuela Profesional de Ingeniería de Minas, Universidad Nacional Daniel Alcides Carrión, Cerro de Pasco, Peru.
* Mining Engineering Department, University of Chile, Santiago, Chile
* Departamento de Ingeniería en Minas, Universidad de Santiago de Chile, Santiago, Chile
* Centro de Minería, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile
* Faculty of Mines, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Sede Medellín, Colombia

Asia

* Indian School of Mines University, Dhanbad, India
* IIT Kharagpur, Kharagpur, India
* NIT Karnataka, Surathkal, India
* NIT Rourkela, Orissa, India
* Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology(NIT Nagpur), Maharashtra, India
* NIT Raipur, Chattisgarh, India
* Banaras Hindu University, Department of Mining Engineering, Varanasi, India
* Bengal Engineering & Science University, Howrah, India
* Guindy Engineering College, Anna University, Chennai, India
* Kothagudem School of Mines, Kothagudem, India
* University of Tehran, Department of Mining Engineering, Tehran, Iran
* International University of Imam Khomeini, Qazvin, Iran

Australia

* School of Civil and Resource Engineering , University of Western Australia
* School of Civil, Environmental and Mining Engineering , University of Adelaide, South Australia
* University of Wollongong, New South Wales
* School of Mining Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney
* School of Mining Engineering, University of Queensland, Brisbane
* School of Science and Engineering, University of Ballarat, Victoria
* Western Australian School of Mines, Kalgoorlie, Western Australia
* Melbourne School of Engineering, University of Melbourne, Victoria offers a Master of Mining Engineering
* The South Australian School of Mines and Industries, established 1889, is now part of the University of South Australia

From http://en.wikipedia.org/

Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, and transport had a profound effect on the socioeconomic and cultural conditions starting in the United Kingdom, then subsequently spreading throughout Europe, North America, and eventually the world. The onset of the Industrial Revolution marked a major turning point in human history; almost every aspect of daily life was eventually influenced in some way.

Starting in the later part of the 18th century there began a transition in parts of Great Britain's previously manual labour and draft-animal–based economy towards machine-based manufacturing. It started with the mechanisation of the textile industries, the development of iron-making techniques and the increased use of refined coal. Trade expansion was enabled by the introduction of canals, improved roads and railways. The introduction of steam power fuelled primarily by coal, wider utilisation of water wheels and powered machinery (mainly in textile manufacturing) underpinned the dramatic increases in production capacity. The development of all-metal machine tools in the first two decades of the 19th century facilitated the manufacture of more production machines for manufacturing in other industries. The effects spread throughout Western Europe and North America during the 19th century, eventually affecting most of the world, a process that continues as industrialisation. The impact of this change on society was enormous.

The first Industrial Revolution, which began in the 18th century, merged into the Second Industrial Revolution around 1850, when technological and economic progress gained momentum with the development of steam-powered ships, railways, and later in the 19th century with the internal combustion engine and electrical power generation. The period of time covered by the Industrial Revolution varies with different historians. Eric Hobsbawm held that it 'broke out' in Britain in the 1780s and was not fully felt until the 1830s or 1840s, while T. S. Ashton held that it occurred roughly between 1760 and 1830. Some twentieth century historians such as John Clapham and Nicholas Crafts have argued that the process of economic and social change took place gradually and the term revolution is not a true description of what took place. This is still a subject of debate among historians. GDP per capita was broadly stable before the Industrial Revolution and the emergence of the modern capitalist economy. The Industrial Revolution began an era of per-capita economic growth in capitalist economies. Historians agree that the Industrial Revolution was one of the most important events in history.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/

Hushing

Hushing is an ancient mining method using a flood or torrent of water to reveal mineral veins. The method was applied in several ways, both in prospecting for ores, and for their exploitation. Mineral veins are often hidden below soil and sub-soil, which must be stripped away to discover the ore veins. A flood of water is very effective in moving soil as well as working the ore deposits when combined with other methods such as fire-setting. It was used during the formation and expansion of the Roman Empire from the first century BC on to the end of the empire. It is now redundant except in a variant known as hydraulic mining, where jets or streams of water are used to break down deposits, especially of alluvial gold and alluvial tin.

History



The method is well described by Pliny the Elder in Book XXXIII of his Naturalis Historia from the first century AD. He distinguishes the use of the method for prospecting for ore and use during mining itself. It was used during the Roman period for hydraulic mining of alluvial gold deposits, and in opencast vein mining, for removal of rock debris, created by mechanical attack and fire-setting. He describes how tanks and reservoirs are built near the suspected veins, filled with water from an aqueduct, and the water suddenly released from a sluice-gate onto the hillside below, scouring the soil away to reveal the bedrock and any veins occurring there. The power behind a large release of water is very great, especially if it forms a single water wave, and is well known as a strong force in coastal erosion and river erosion. The method was most effective when used on steep ground such as the brow of a hill or mountain, the force of falling water lessening as the slope becomes smaller.

If veins of ore were found using the method, then hushing could also remove the rock debris created when attacking the veins. Pliny also describes the way hillsides could be undermined, and then collapsed to release the ore-bearing material. The Romans developed the method into a sophisticated way of extracting large alluvial gold deposits such as those at Las Medulas in northern Spain, and for hard rock gold veins such as those at Dolaucothi in Wales. The development of the mine at Dolaucothi shows the versatility of the method in finding and then exploiting ore deposits.



There are the remains of numerous tanks and reservoirs still to be seen at the site, one example being shown at left. It was a small tank built for prospection on the north side of the isolated opencast north of the main mine. It was presumably built to prospect the ground to one side of the opencast for traces of the gold-bearing veins extending to the north. It failed to find the veins here, so was abandoned. It probably precedes the construction of the 7 mile long aqueduct supplying the main site, and was fed by a small leat from a tributary of the river Cothi about a mile further north up the valley. The method could be applied to any ore type, and succeeded best in hilly terrain. The Romans were well experienced in building the long aqueducts needed to supply the large volumes of water needed by the method, and was probably directed by army engineers.

Earlier evidence

The earlier history of the method is obscure, although there is an intriguing reference by Strabo writing ca 25 BC in his Geographica, to gold extraction in the Val d'Aosta in the Alps. He describes the problem gold miners had with a local tribe because of the great volumes of water they had taken from the local river, reducing it to a trickle and so affecting the local farmers. Whether or not they used the water for hushing remains unknown, but it seems possible because the method requires large volumes of water to be operated. Later, when the Romans assumed control of the mining operations, the locals charged them for using the water. The tribe occupied the higher mountains and controlled the water sources, and had not yet been subdued by the Romans.

The historian Polybius, who lived from 220 to 170 BC was writing much earlier in The Histories, and he records that gold mining in the Alpine region was so successful that the price of gold in Italy fell by a third during this period. From his description of large nuggets, and the find being made only two feet below the ground level, with deposits reaching down to 15 feet, it is likely to have been an alluvial deposit where water methods such as hushing would have been very effective. Modern attempts to identify the mines point to one especially large ancient gold mine at Bessa in Northern Italy. It appears to have been worked intensively in pre-Roman days and continued to expand with Roman involvement. The scale of the aqueducts there seems to support Strabo's comments.

Later examples

The technique appears to have been neglected through the medieval period, because Georg Agricola, writing in the 15th century in his De Re Metallica, does not mention hushing at all. On the other hand, he does describe the many uses of water power, especially for washing ore and driving watermills.

However, the technique was used on a large scale in the lead mines of northern Britain from Elizabethan times onwards. The method is described in the Royal Commission on Children in Mines in 1842 in relation to children being used in the lead mines of the Pennines. The remnants of the "hush gullies" are visible at many places in the Pennines as well as at many other locations such as the extensive lead mines at Cwmystwyth in Ceredigion, and at the Stiperstones in Shropshire.

One famous and spectacular example is the Great Dun Fell hush gully near Cross Fell, Cumbria, probably formed in Georgian era in the search for lead and silver. The gully is about 100 feet deep, carries a small stream, and is a prominent landmark on the bleak moors.

Although the Cornish did not use the term "hushing", there is at least one reference to the technique being used at Tregardock in North Cornwall. Around 1580 mine adventurers used the method to work a lead-silver deposit, although lives were lost in the attempt.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/

Hurrying

A hurrier, also sometimes called a coal drawer, was a child or woman employed by a collier to transport the coal that they had mined. Woman would normally get the children to help them because of the dificulty of carrying the coal. Common particularly in the early 19th century, the hurrier pulled a corf (baskets or small wagons) full of coal along roadways as small as 16 inches in height. They would often work 12 hour shifts, making several runs down to the coal face and back to the surface again.

Some children came from the workhouses and were apprenticed to the colliers. Adults could not easily do the job because of the size of the roadways, which were limited on the grounds of cost and structural integrity. Hurriers were equipped with a "gurl" belt – a leather belt with a swivel chain linked to the corf. They were also given candles as it was too expensive to light the whole mine.

Roles

Children as young as three or four were employed, with both sexes contributing to the work. The younger ones often worked in small teams, with those pushing the corf from the rear being known as thrusters. The thrusters often had to push the corf using their heads, leading to the hair on their crown being worn away and the child becoming bald.


Some children were employed as coal trappers, particularly those not yet strong enough to pull or push the corf. This job saw the child sit in a small cutting waiting for the hurriers to approach. They would then open the trapdoors to allow the hurrier and his cargo through. The trappers also opened the trapdoors to provide ventilation in some locations.

As mines grew larger the volume of coal extracted increased beyond the pulling capabilities of children. Instead horses guided by coal drivers were used to pull the corves. These drivers were usually older children between the ages of 10 and 14.

Legislation

In August 1842 the Children's Employment Commission drew up an act of Parliament which gave a minimum working age for boys in mines, though the age varied between districts and even between mines. The Mines and Collieries Act also outlawed the employment of women and girls in mines. In 1870 it became compulsory for all children aged between five and thirteen to go to school, ending much of the hurrying. It was still a common profession for school leavers well into the 1920s.

The 1969 song The Testimony Of Patience Kershaw by Frank Higgins centres around the testimony of Patience Kershaw when she spoke to the Children's Employment Commission.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/

History of coal mining

Due to its abundance, coal has been mined in various parts of the world throughout history and continues to be an important economic activity today. Compared to wood fuels, coal yields a higher amount of energy per mass and could be obtained in areas where wood is not readily available. Though historically used as a means of household heating, coal is now mostly used in industry, especially in smelting and alloy production, as well as electricity generation.

Large-scale coal mining developed during the Industrial Revolution, and coal provided the main source of primary energy for industry and transportation in the West from the 18th century to the 1950s. Coal remains an important energy source, due to its low cost and abundance when compared to other fuels, particularly for electricity generation. However, coal is also mined today on a large scale by open pit methods wherever the coal strata strike the surface and is relatively shallow.

Britain developed the main techniques of underground coal mining from the late 18th century onward with further progress being driven by 19th century and early 20th century progress.

However oil and its associated fuels began to be used as alternative from this time onward. By the late 20th century coal was for the most part replaced in domestic as well as industrial and transportation usage by oil, natural gas or electricity produced from oil, gas, nuclear power or renewable energy sources.

Since 1890, coal mining has also been a political and social issue. Coal miners' labour and trade unions became powerful in many countries in the 20th century, and often the miners were leaders of the Left or Socialist movements (as in Britain, Germany, Poland, Japan, Canada and the U.S.) Since 1970, environmental issues have been increasingly important, including the health of miners, destruction of the landscape from strip mines and mountaintop removal, air pollution, and coal combustion's contribution to global warming.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/

Gold rush

A gold rush is a period of feverish migration of workers into the area of a dramatic discovery of commercial quantities of gold. Gold rushes took place in the 19th century in Australia, Brazil, Canada, South Africa, and the United States.

Gold rushes were typically marked by a general buoyant feeling of a "free for all" in income mobility, in which any single individual might become abundantly wealthy almost instantly. The significance of gold rushes in history has given a longer life to the term, and it is now applied generally to denote any capitalist economic activity in which the participants aspire to race each other in common pursuit of a new and apparently highly lucrative market, often precipitated by an advance in technology.

Gold rushes helped spur permanent non-indigenous settlement of new regions and define a significant part of the culture of the North American and Australian frontiers. As well, at a time when money was based on gold, the newly-mined gold provided economic stimulus far beyond the gold fields. Gold rushes presumably extend back as far as gold mining, to the Roman Empire, whose gold mining was described by Diodorus Siculus and Pliny the Elder, and probably further back to Ancient Egypt.

There are about 13 million to 20 million small-scale miners around the world, according to Communities and Small-Scale Mining (CASM). Approximately 100 million people are directly or indirectly dependent on small-scale mining. There are 800,000 to 1.5 million artisanal miners in Democratic Republic of Congo, 350,000 to 650,000 in Sierra Leone, and 150,000 to 250,000 in Ghana, with millions more across Africa.

Life cycle of a gold rush



Within each mining rush there is typically a transition through progressively higher capital expenditures, larger organizations, and more specialized knowledge. They may also progress from high-unit value to lower unit value minerals (from gold to silver to base metals).

The rush is started by a discovery of placer gold made by an individual. At first the gold may be washed from the sand and gravel by individual miners with little training, using a gold pan or similar simple instrument. Once it is clear that the volume of gold-bearing sediment is larger than a few cubic meters, the placer miners will build rockers or sluice boxes, with which a small group can wash gold from the sediment many times faster than using gold pans. (See placer mining for details.) Winning the gold in this manner requires almost no capital investment, only a simple pan or equipment that may be built on the spot, and only simple organization. The low investment, the high value per unit weight of gold, and the ability of gold dust and gold nuggets to serve as a medium of exchange, allow placer gold rushes to occur even in remote locations.

After the sluice-box stage, placer mining may become increasingly large scale, requiring larger organizations, and higher capital expenditures. Small claims owned and mined by individuals may need to be merged into larger tracts. Difficult-to-reach placer deposits may be mined by tunnels. Water may be diverted by dams and canals to placer mine active river beds or to deliver water needed to wash dry placers. The more advanced techniques of ground sluicing, hydraulic mining, and dredging may be used.

Typically the heyday of a placer gold rush would last only a few years. The free gold supply in stream beds would become depleted somewhat quickly, and the initial phase would be followed by prospecting for veins of lode gold that were the original source of the placer gold. Hardrock mining, like placer mining, may evolve from low capital investment and simple technology to progressively higher capital and technology. The surface outcrop of a gold-bearing vein may be oxidized, so that the gold occurs as native gold, and the ore needs only to be crushed and washed (free milling ore). The first miners may at first build a simple arrastre to crush their ore; later, they may build stamp mills to crush ore more quickly. As the miners dig down, they may find that the deeper part of vein contains gold locked in sulfide or telluride minerals, which will require smelting. If the ore is still sufficiently rich, it may be worth shipping to a distant smelter (direct shipping ore). Lower-grade ore may require on-site treatment to either recover the gold or to produce a concentrate sufficiently rich for transport to the smelter. As the district turns to lower-grade ore, the mining may change from underground mining to large open-pit mining.

Many silver rushes followed upon gold rushes. As transportation and infrastructure improve, the focus may change progressively from gold to silver to base metals. In this way, Leadville, Colorado started as a placer gold discovery, achieved fame as a silver-mining district, then relied on lead and zinc in its later days. Butte, Montana began mining placer gold, then became a silver-mining district, then became for a time the world’s largest copper producer.

Gold rushes by region

Australian Gold rushes

The Victorian gold rush, which occurred in Australia in 1851 soon after the California gold rush, was the biggest of several Australian gold rushes. That gold rush was highly significant to Australia’s, and especially Victoria's and Melbourne's, political and economic development. With the Australian gold rushes came the construction of the first railways and telegraph lines, multiculturalism and racism, the Eureka Stockade and the end of penal transportation.

In 1852 alone, 370,000 immigrants arrived in Australia and the economy of the nation boomed. The 'rush' was well and truly on. Victoria contributed more than one third of the world's gold output in the 1850s and in just two years the State's population had grown from 77,000 to 540,000.

The number of new arrivals to Australia was greater than the number of convicts who had landed there in the previous seventy years. The total population trebled from 430,000 in 1851 to 1.7 million in 1871.

Gold rushes happened at or around:

* Coolgardie
* Charters Towers
* Kalgoorlie
* Bathurst
* Bendigo
* Ballarat
* Hill End

North America



The first significant gold rush in the United States was in Cabarrus County, North Carolina (east of Charlotte), in 1799 at today's Reed's Gold Mine. Thirty years later, in 1829, the Georgia Gold Rush in the southern Appalachians occurred. It was followed by the California Gold Rush of 1848–52 in the Sierra Nevada, which captured the popular imagination. The California gold rush led directly to the settlement of California by Americans and the rapid entry of that state into the union in 1850. The gold rush in 1849 stimulated worldwide interest in prospecting for gold, and led to new rushes in Australia, South Africa, Wales and Scotland.- Successive gold rushes occurred in western North America, moving north and east from California: Fraser Canyon, the Cariboo district and other parts of British Columbia, and the Rocky Mountains. Resurrection Creek, near Hope, Alaska was the site of Alaska's first gold rush more than a century ago, and placer mining continues today. Other notable Alaska Gold Rushes were Nome and the Fortymile River.

Klondike

One of the last "great gold rushes" was the Klondike Gold Rush in Canada's Yukon Territory (1898–99), immortalized in the novels of Jack London, the poetry of Robert W. Service and Charlie Chaplin's film The Gold Rush. The main goldfield was along the south flank of the Klondike River near its confluence with the Yukon River near what was to become Dawson City in Canada's Yukon Territory but it also helped open up the relatively new US possession of Alaska to exploration and settlement and promoted the discovery of other gold finds.

South Africa

In South Africa, the Witwatersrand Gold Rush in the Transvaal was important to that country's history, leading to the founding of Johannesburg and tensions between the Boers and British settlers.

South African gold production went from zero in 1886 to 23% of the total world output in 1896. At the time of the South African rush, gold production benefited from the newly discovered techniques by Scottish chemists, the MacArthur-Forrest process, of using potassium cyanide to extract gold from low-grade ore.

Notable gold rushes by date

Rushes of the 1690s

* Brazil Gold Rush, Minas Gerais (1695)

Rushes of the 1800s

* North Carolina Gold Rush, Cabarrus County, North Carolina, US (1799)

Rushes of the 1820s

* Georgia Gold Rush, Georgia, US (1828)

Rushes of the 1840s

* California Gold Rush, California (1848)

Rushes of the 1850s

* Queen Charlottes Gold Rush, British Columbia, Canada (1850); the first of many British Columbia gold rushes
* Victorian Gold Rush, Victoria, Australia
* Fraser Canyon Gold Rush, British Columbia (1858–1861)
* Rock Creek Gold Rush, British Columbia (1859–1860s)
* Pikes Peak Gold Rush, Pikes Peak, Colorado (1859)
* Northern Nevada Gold Rush (from 1850 - 1934)

Rushes of the 1860s

* Idaho Gold Rush, also known as the Fort Colville Gold Rush, near Colville, Washington state (1860)
* Cariboo Gold Rush, British Columbia (1862–65)
* Stikine Gold Rush, British Columbia (1863)
* Big Bend Gold Rush, British Columbia (1865—66)
* Omineca Gold Rush, British Columbia (1869)
* Wild Horse Creek Gold Rush, British Columbia (1860s),
* Black Hills Gold Rush, Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming (1863, later extending into Montana)
* Eastern Oregon Gold Rush (1860s–1870s)
* Kildonnan Gold Rush, Sutherland, Scotland (1869)
* Central Otago Gold Rush, New Zealand

Rushes of the 1870s

* Cassiar Gold Rush, British Columbia, 1871
* Palmer River Gold Rush, Palmer River, Queensland, Australia (1872)
* Black Hills Gold Rush, The Black Hills, South Dakota (1874)
* Bodie Gold Rush, Bodie, California (1876)
* Kumara Gold Rush, Kumara and Dillmanstown, New Zealand (1876)
* Hungen, Hesse, Germany (1877)

Rushes of the 1880s

* Witwatersrand Gold Rush, Transvaal, South Africa (1886); the resulting influx of miners was one of the triggers of the Second Boer War
* Cayoosh Gold Rush in Lillooet, British Columbia (1884—87)
* Tulameen Gold Rush near Princeton British Columbia

Rushes of the 1890s

* Tierra del Fuego Gold Rush, Tierra del Fuego, southern Chile and Argentina
* Cripple Creek Gold Rush, Cripple Creek, Colorado (1891)
* Westralia Gold Rush, Kalgoorlie, Western Australia
* Klondike Gold Rush, centered on Dawson City, Yukon, Canada (1896–1898)
* Atlin Gold Rush, Atlin, British Columbia (1898)
* Nome Gold Rush, Nome, Alaska (1898–99)

Rushes of the 1900s

* Fairbanks Gold Rush, Fairbanks, Alaska (1902–1905)
* Goldfield Gold Rush, Goldfield, Nevada
* Cobalt Silver Rush, 1903-5, Cobalt, Ontario, Canada
* Porcupine Gold Rush, 1909-11, Timmins, Ontario, Canada – little known, but one of the largest in terms of gold mined, 67 million ounces as of 2001

Rushes of the 1930s

* Kakamega gold rush, Kenya, 1932

Rushes of the 1970s

* Upper Amazon Gold Rush, Upper Amazon region, Brazil and Peru

Rushes of the 1980s

* Amazon Gold Rush, Amazon region, Brazil
* Mount Kare Gold Rush, Enga Province, Papua New Guinea

Rushes of the 2000s

* Great Mongolian Gold Rush, Mongolia (2001)
* Apuí Gold Rush, Apuí, Amazonas, Brazil (2006); approximately 500,000 miners are thought to work in the Amazon's "garimpos" (gold mines).

From http://en.wikipedia.org/

Geordie lamp

The Geordie lamp was invented by George Stephenson in 1815 as a solution to explosions due to firedamp in coal mines.

Although controversy arose between Stephenson's design and the Davy lamp, (invented by Humphry Davy in the same year), Stephenson's original design worked on significantly different principles. If the only way air could get to the flame was restricted (a baseplate pierced by a number of small-bore brass tubes was the usual way of doing this) and the lamp body above the flame lengthened, then the same amount of air could get to the flame, but would pass through the flow restriction at a velocity higher than the velocity of the flame in a mixture of firedamp (mostly methane) and air. This, then, prevented an explosive backblast that might light the surrounding air.

Stephenson's design used glass to surround the flame, which cut out less of the light than Davy's, where the gauze surrounded it. But this also posed the danger of breakage in the harsh conditions of mineworking, which problem was not resolved until the invention of safety glass. Stephenson tried several different designs in early years and later adopted Davy's gauze in preference to the tubes and it was this revised design that was used for most of the 19th century as the Geordie lamp.

The name is possibly the route by which 'Geordie' became the familiar and affectionate epithet for Tynesiders, deriving from a diminutive form of the inventor's first name, George.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/

Freeminer

A Freeminer is the ancient title given to a coal miner in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, UK who has earned the right to mine personal plots known as "gales" within the royal forest.

Eligibility

In order to earn this right, an individual must be male, born within the ancient administrative district known as the "Hundred of St Briavels", (now generally considered to be contiguous with the Forest of Dean (district)), and have worked down a mine for a year-and-a-day. The officer in charge of regulating the freemines and freeminers, including allocating the gales, is known as the Gaveller, a historical post which still exists today.

The rights of the Freeminers are very ancient, and were confirmed by Edward II of England, who in doing so, claimed that the rights of the Freeminers had existed "tyme out of mynde". A plaque bearing the engraved coat of arms of the Freeminers hangs in Newland church, and another in the church of St. Michael in Abenhall.

Present day

Freeminers still operate today, though on a much reduced basis, due to several factors including the closure of mainstream commercial pits in the Forest of Dean, the low price of and demand for coal, the relatively high costs of small-scale extraction, the closure of maternity hospital facilities - such that it will be impossible to be born within the "Hundred of St Briavels" - and attempts by the UK government to exact commercial operating licence charges out of these small-scale producers. However, despite the modest level of activity, Freemining tradition remains an important part of local identity, and some Freemines operate successfully, especially through diversification into non-traditional areas, such as tourism and ochre mining at Clearwell Caves.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/

Fire-setting

Fire-setting is a method of mining used mostly in antiquity. Fires were set against a rock face to heat the stone, which was then doused with water causing the stone to fracture by thermal shock. This technique was best performed in opencast mines where the smoke and fumes could dissipate safely. The technique was very dangerous in underground workings without adequate ventilation. The method became redundant with the growth in use of explosives.

History



The method is first described by Diodorus Siculus in his Bibliotheca historica written about 60 BC, about methods of mining used in ancient Egyptian gold mines. It is also mentioned in greater detail by Pliny the Elder in his Naturalis Historia published in the first century AD. In Book XXXIII, he describes mining methods for gold, and the pursuit of the gold-bearing veins underground using tunnels and stopes. He mentions the use of vinegar to quench the hot rock, but water would have been just as effective as vinegar was expensive at the time for regular use in a mine. The reference to vinegar may come from a description by Livy of Hannibal's crossing of the Alps, when it was said that the soldiers used vinegar in fire-setting to remove large rocks in the path of his army.



Pliny also says that the method was used both in opencast and deep mining. That the method was used in practice is confirmed by remains found at the Roman gold mine of Dolaucothi in west Wales, when modern miners broke into much older workings during the 1930s where they found wood ashes near worked rock faces. In another part of the mine, there are three adits at different heights which have been driven through barren rock to the gold-bearing veins for some considerable distance, and they would have not only provided drainage but also ventilation to remove the smoke and hot gases during a fire-setting operation. They were certainly much larger in section than was normal for access galleries, and the draught of air through them would have been considerable.

Fire-setting would have been used extensively during opencast mining, and is also described by Pliny in connection with the use of another mining technique known as hushing. Aqueducts were built to supply copious amounts of water to the minehead, where they were used to fill tanks and cisterns. The water was unleashed to scour the hillside below, both soil in the case of prospecting for metal veins, and then rock debris after a vein had been found. Fire-setting was used to break up the hard rocks of the vein itself and surrounding barren rock, and was much safer than use in underground workings since the smoke and fumes would be dissipated much more easily than in a confined space underground. Pliny also describes undermining methods were used to facilitate attack of the hard rocks, and probably the softer alluvial deposits too.

Agricola



The method continued in use in the medieval period, and is described by Georg Agricola in his treatise on mining and mineral extraction, De Re Metallica. He warns about the problem of the "foetid vapours" and the need to evacuate the workings while the fires are lit, and presumably for some time afterwards until the gases and smoke had cleared. The problem raises the question of ventilation means in the mines, a problem often solved by ensuring that there was a continuous path for escape of the noxious fumes, perhaps aided by artificial ventilation. Agricola mentions the use of large water-powered bellows to create a draught, and continuity of workings to the surface were essential for a stream of air to run through them.

In later times, a fire at the base of a shaft was used to create an updraught, but just like fire-setting, it was a hazardous and dangerous procedure, especially in collieries. As the number and complexity of the underground workings increased, care was needed to channel the air draught to all parts of the tunnels and faces. It was usually achieved by installing doors at key points. Most of the deaths in coal mine disasters were caused by inhalation of the toxic gases produced by firedamp explosions.



The method continued in use for many years afterwards until finally made redundant by the use of explosives. However, they also produce toxic gases and care is needed to ensure good ventilation to remove those gases, like carbon monoxide, as well as choice of the explosive itself to minimise their emission.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/

De re metallica

De re metallica (Latin for On the Nature of Metals (Minerals)) is a book cataloging the state of the art of mining, refining, and smelting metals, published in 1556. The author was Georg Bauer, whose pen name was the Latinized Georgius Agricola. The book remained the authoritative text on mining for 250 years after its publication.

Agricola had spent nine years in the Bohemian town of Joachimsthal, now in the Czech Republic. (Joachimsthal is famous for its silver mines and the origin of the word "Thaler.") After Joachimsthal, he spent the rest of his life in Chemnitz, a prominent mining town in what was then Saxony. Both Joachimsthal and Chemnitz are in the Erzgebirge, or Ore Mountains.



Mining Methods



Agricola describes methods for prospecting for minerals, their occurrence in the form of alluvial deposits and the distribution of the veins or ores. He follows these sections by a description of the methods of deep mining, the building of shafts to extract the ore, and tunnels to follow the veins. The book is illustrated copiously with often very detailed woodcuts of the various operations. The use of water for washing ores is discussed in great detail, such as the use of launders and washing tables, especially needed for heavy ores such as those of gold and tin, together with various machines needed to crush the vein ore, many of which were worked by water mills. He makes frequent reference to classical authors, such as Pliny the Elder who wrote about mining methods in his Natural History published in the 77 AD.

One of the primary problems this book addressed was the removal of water from the mines. The limit Agricola documents for raising water from the mines via a pump is 32 feet. It could then be dumped into another level and pumped from there. The investigation of this problem (and its popularization) would spark a discussion leading to the discovery of air pressure. Also included in this volume are discussions of the geology of ore bodies, surveying, mine construction, and ventilation. He describes the method of breaking hard rocks using fire-setting, which involved making a fire against a rock-face, and then quenching the rock with water to induce cracking by thermal shock.

De Re Metallica was not limited to mining. It also covered assaying, refining, smelting, and marketing. It covered the creation of saltpeter, and the use of different acids in the refining process, as well as alchemy, timbering, and even some on the diseases of miners and smelters.

Publication history



Although Agricola died in 1555, the publication was delayed until the completion of the extensive and detailed woodcuts. The book was costly and limited in distribution: in many areas it was chained in churches, so that the priest could translate from Latin for parishioners. One of the rare editions (printed in 1657 in Italy) of this book can be found.

In 1912, the first English translation of De Re Metallica was privately published in London by subscription. The translators were Herbert Hoover, a mining engineer (and later President of the United States), and his wife, Lou Henry Hoover, a geologist and Latinist. The translation is notable not only for its clarity of language, but for the extensive footnotes, which detail the classical references to mining and metals, such as the Natural History of Pliny the Elder, the history of mining law in England, France, and the German states; safety in mines, including historical safety; and known minerals at the time that Agricola wrote De Re Metallica.

Subsequent translations into other languages, including German, owe much to the Hoover translations, as their footnotes detail their difficulties with Agricola's baroque vocabulary.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/

Davy lamp

The Davy lamp is a safety lamp with a wick and oil vessel burning originally a heavy vegetable oil, devised in 1815 by Sir Humphry Davy. It was created for use in coal mines, allowing deep seams to be mined despite the presence of methane and other flammable gases, called firedamp or minedamp.

Davy had discovered that a flame enclosed inside a mesh of a certain fineness cannot ignite firedamp. The screen acts as a flame arrestor; air (and any firedamp present) can pass through the mesh freely enough to support combustion, but the holes are too fine to allow a flame to propagate through them and ignite any firedamp outside the mesh. The first trial of a Davy lamp with a wire sieve was at Hebburn Colliery on 9 January 1816.



Gas Detector

The lamp also provided a crude test for the presence of gases. If flammable gas mixtures were present, the flame of the Davy lamp burned higher with a blue tinge. Miners could also place a safety lamp close to the ground to detect gases, such as carbon dioxide, that are denser than air and so could collect in depressions in the mine; if the mine air was oxygen-poor (asphyxiant gas), the lamp flame would be extinguished (black damp or chokedamp).

Comparison with Geordie lamp

There was some controversy, since George Stephenson also produced a similar safety lamp in 1816 called the Stephenson generally and locally within the North East coalfields the Geordie.

Supporters of each man seem to have regarded the other as having plagiarised their man's idea. The Geordie lamp had a glass inside the tubular gauze with a copper cap; the air was fed from below. The Davy lamp was simpler and cheaper, and was popular with mine owners.

There were safety arguments on both sides: in principle, a poorly maintained (or badly designed) Davy lamp could overheat the gauze if it met a high concentration of methane. The gauze rusted easily in the damp mines, making the lamp hazardous. The Geordie lamp could become unsafe if the internal glass was broken (as it became an oversize Davy). Both original lamps were faulty, and led to attempts at improvement, by using multiple gauzes above the flame, and with a glass surround to improve illumination. They were poor sources of light and the situation did not improve until the introduction of electric hand lamps in the Victorian period.

Accident rate

The introduction of the Davy lamp actually led to an increase in accidents in mines, as the lamp encouraged working mines that had previously been closed for safety reasons.

One reason why the lamp caused an increase in the accident rate was that the men continued to work in unsafe conditions due to the presence of methane gas. The other reason why there was an increase was that there should have been an installation of extractor ventilation fans installed at each mine to reduce the concentration of methane in the air. This would have been expensive, and thus they were not installed by mine owners. The lamps also had to be provided by the miners themselves, not the owners, as traditionally the miners bought their own candles at top price in the company store. The installation of fans became required after laws requiring minimum air quality standards were introduced.

Modern Lamps

The modern day equivalent of the Davy lamp is the Protector Garforth GR6S flame safety lamp which is used for firedamp testing in all UK coal mines. A modified version of this lamp is used to transport the Olympic Flame for the torch relays. They have recently been used for the Sydney, Athens, and Turin torch relays and have been used for the Special Olympics Beijing relay, they will also be used for the London 2012 relay. The lamps are still made in Eccles.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/

Stamp mill

A stamp mill (or stamp battery or stamping mill) is a type of mill machine that crushes material by pounding rather than grinding, either for further processing or for extraction of metallic ores. Breaking material down is a type of unit operation.



Cornish stamps are stamp mills that were developed in Cornwall for use in tin mining in around 1850. Cornish stamps were used to crush small lumps of ore into sand like material. Constructed from heavy timber or iron lifters with iron "heads" at the bottom were raised by cams on a rotating axle, and fell on the ore and water mixture, fed into a box beneath. The heads normally weighed between 4 and 8 cwt vague each, and were usually arranged in sets of four, in timber frames. Small stamps were commonly powered by water wheels and larger ones by steam engines.

Californian stamps were based on Cornish stamps and were used in the Californian gold mines. They were more rapid in action, and the heads and lifters were made to rotate so that they wore more evenly. The other advantage of the Californian stamp was that a single head could crush 1.5 tons of ore as opposed to the Cornish stamps which could only crush 1 ton.

Arrangement



A stamp mill consists of a set of heavy steel (iron-shod wood in some cases) stamps, loosely held vertically in a frame, in which the stamps can slide up and down. They are lifted by cams on a horizontal rotating shaft. On modern mills, the cam is arranged to lift the stamp from the side, so that it causes the stamp to rotate. This evens the wear on the shoe at the foot of the stamp. As the cam moves from under the stamp, the stamp falls onto the ore below, crushing the rock, and the lifting process is repeated at the next pass of the cam. Each one frame and stamp set is sometimes called a "battery" or, confusingly, a "stamp" and mills are sometimes categorised by how many stamps they have, i.e. a "10 stamp mill" has 10 sets. They usually are arranged linearly, but when a mill is enlarged, a new line of them may be constructed rather than extending the line. Abandoned mill sites (as documented by industrial archaeologists) will usually have linear rows of foundation sets as their most prominent visible feature as the overall apparatus can exceed 20 feet in height, requiring large foundations. Stamps are usually arranged in sets of five.

Some ore processing applications used large quantities of water so some stamp mills are located near natural or artificial bodies of water. For example, the Redridge Steel Dam was built to supply stamp mills with process water.



History

The main components for water-powered stamp mills - water wheels, cams, and hammers - were already known by the Greeks in Hellenistic times. Ancient cams are in evidence in early water-powered automata from the third century BC. A passage in the Natural History of the Roman scholar Pliny (NH 18.97) indicates that water-driven pestles had become fairly widespread in Italy by the first century AD: "The greater part of Italy uses an unshod pestle and also wheels which water turns as it flows past, and a trip-hammer mola". These trip-hammers were used for the pounding and hulling of grain. Grain-pounders with pestles, as well as ordinary watermills, are also attested as late as the middle of the fifth century in a monastery founded by Romanus of Condat in the remote Jura region, indicating that the knowledge of trip hammers continued into the early Middle Ages. Apart from agricultural processing, archaeological evidence also strongly suggests the existence of trip hammers in Roman metal working. In Ickham in Kent, a large metal hammer-head with mechanical deformations was excavated in an area where several Roman water-mills and metal waste dumps have also been traced.

The widest application of stamp mills, however, seems to have occurred in Roman mining, where ore from deep veins was first crushed into small pieces for further processing. Here, the regularity and spacing of large indentations on stone anvils indicate the use of cam-operated ore stamps, much like the devices of later medieval mining. Such mechanically deformed anvils have been found at numerous Roman silver and gold mining sites in Western Europe, including at Dolaucothi (Wales), and on the Iberian peninsula, where the datable examples are from the 1st and 2nd century AD. At Dolaucothi, these stamp mills were hydraulic-driven and possibly also at other Roman mining sites, where the large scale use of the hushing and ground sluicing technique meant that large amounts of water were directly available for powering the machines.

Stamp mills were used by miners in Samarkand as early as 973. They were used in medieval Persia to crush mineral ores. By the 11th century, stamp mills were in widespread use throughout the medieval Islamic world, from Islamic Spain and North Africa in the west to Central Asia in the east.

Water-powered and mechanised trip hammers reappeared in medieval Europe by the 12th century. Their use was described in medieval written sources of Styria (in modern-day Austria), written in 1135 and another in 1175 AD. Both texts mentioned the use of vertical stamp mills for ore-crushing. Medieval French sources of the years 1116 and 1249 both record the use of mechanised trip hammers used in the forging of wrought iron. Medieval European trip hammers by the 15th century were most often in the shape of the vertical pestle stamp-mill. The well-known Renaissance artist and inventor Leonardo de Vinci often sketched trip hammers for use in forges and even file-cutting machinery, those of the vertical pestle stamp-mill type. The oldest depicted European illustration of a martinet forge-hammer is perhaps the Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus of Olaus Magnus, dated to 1565 AD. In this woodcut image, there is the scene of three martinets and a waterwheel working wood and leather bellows of the Osmund bloomery furnace. The recumbrent hammer was first depicted in European artwork in an illustration by Sandrart and Zonca (dated 1621 AD).



Water-powered stamp mills are illustrated in book 8 of Georg Agricola's De Re Metallica, published in 1556. The mills Agricola shows were largely wooden construction, excepting the use of iron shoes on the end of each stamp. The camshaft was set directly on the axle of the waterwheel, and stamps were typically arranged in gangs of three, with each wheel driving one or two gangs.



The first stamp mill in the U.S. was built in 1829 at the Capps mine near Charlotte, North Carolina. They were common in gold, silver and copper mining regions of the US in the latter 19th and early 20th centuries, in operations where the ore was crushed as a prelude to extracting the metals. They were superseded in the second half of the 19th century in many applications by more efficient methods. However their simplicity meant that they were used in remote areas for ore processing well into the 20th century. (19th century advertisements for some mills highlighted that they could be broken down, packed in by mule in pieces, and assembled on site with only simple tools)

Other stamping mills




Stamp mills were used in early paper making for preparing the paper-stuff (pulp), before the invention of the Hollander beater. They were used in mining for breaking ore, and in oil-seed processing for prior to pressing the oil from the milled seeds. Early mills were water powered but mills can be steam, water, or electric powered.

A stamping mill may refer to a factory that performs stamping.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/