Download or read book Notices of Mining Machinery and Various Mechanical Appliances in the Use written by William P. Blake and published by Forgotten Books. This book was released on 2015-06-26 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from Notices of Mining Machinery and Various Mechanical Appliances in the Use: Chiefly in the Pacific States and Territories for Mining, Raising and Working Ores With Comparative Notices of Foreign Apparatus for Similar Purposes The letter of instructions from the Secretary of the Treasury, in 1868, to the Commissioner of Mining Statistics, indicated as one of the most important subjects for inquiry, "the relative merits of the various inventions, machines, and mechanical contrivances in use or projected for the reduction of the precious metals, and for all other purposes connected with the business of mining and metallurgy" At the request of Commissioner Raymond, the writer undertook the preparation of a report upon the subject, and notices of the principal mechanical appliances in use were submitted, and printed as Part IV of the Commissioner's report to Congress for the year 1870. The present volume is a reprint of that part, with some modifications. Under the circumstances, it was not possible to prepare a systematic and comprehensive treatise upon the machines used in mining, and this was not attempted. The time and means were limited, and only the intervals between other daily duties could be devoted to the work. The notices were written in the winter of 1869-'70, and since the delivery of the manuscript there have been notable advances in the construction and use of mining machinery. The activity and enterprise of the miners of the Pacific slope is shown in the rapid succession of improvements. It is not possible in the ordinary course of publication of reports of this kind to keep pace with the march of improvement and discovery. However fresh and recent a description may be, before it can be published some new advance needs to be chronicled. For example, the diamond drill, described and commended to the attention of miners in these pages, has since been put into successful operation by prospecting in advance some of the gold mines of California. There has also been a fine example of subaqueous mining and blasting in the removal of Blossom Rock, one of the obstructions to the navigation of the harbor of San Francisco. Other blasting operations upon a large scale have been carried on at the Blue Point Tunnel, at Smartsville, California. Hydraulic nozzles, so constructed as to be readily adjustable to any angle, and under easy control, have been introduced. The new Stephens and Rawlings buddle is reported as being used with great success in concentrating the battery sands at Grass Valley. A 60-stamp mill, remarkable for its completeness and admirable arrangement, has recently been built by the Union Iron Works, of San Francisco, for the Eberliardt and Aurora Mining Company, at White Pine. The sixty stamps are grouped in six double batteries. There are twenty-two grinding and amalgamating pans, eleven settlers, and three agitators. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.