By Robert P Multhauf 



MINE PUMPING IN AGRICOLA'S TIME 



AND LATER 



Coins are a source of information much used by his- 

 torians. Elaborately detailed mining landscapes on 16th- 

 century German coins in the National Museum^ discovered 

 by the curator of numismatics and hi ought to the author s 

 attention, led to this study of early fnine-pumping devices. 



The Author: Robert P. Multhauf is curator of 

 Science and Technology', Aiuseum of History and 

 Technology', in the Smithsonian Institution s United 

 States National Museum. 



THE HABIT of heavy reliance on a single source 

 for the substance of the history of Medieval 

 and Renaissance mining techniques in Europe has 

 led to a rather drastic over-simplification of that his- 

 tory, a condition which persists tenaciously in the 

 recent accounts of Parsons, Wolf, and Bromehead.' 

 Our preoccupation with Agricola, who has been well 

 known to the English-language public since the 

 Hoovers' translation of 1912, seems to have in- 

 hibited the investigation of the development of the 

 machines he describes so elegantly. More seriously, 

 the opinion that mining techniques remained essen- 

 tially the same for a century or two beyond his time 

 appears to have hardened into a conviction." 



' VV. B. Parsons, Engineers and engineering in the Renaissance, 

 Baltimore, 1939. Abraham Wolf, A history of science, technology, 

 and philosophy in the 16th and 17th centuries. New York, 1935; and 

 A history of science, technology and philosophy in the eighteenth cen- 

 tury, London, 1938. C. M. Bromehead, "Mining and quarry- 

 ing to the seventeenth century," in Charles Singer and others, 

 A history of technology, vol. 2, Oxford, 1956. 



- .\ccording to Parsons (o/». cit., footnote 1, p. 629) the intro- 

 duction of machinery worked by animals and falling water, 

 "radical improvements" of the 15th century, fixed the devel- 

 opment of the art "until the eighteenth, and, in some respects, 

 even well into the nineteenth century." Wolf in his History of 

 science . . . in the eighteenth century (p. 629, see footnote 1) 

 agrees, saying that "apart from [the steam engine] mining 

 methods remained [during the 18th century] essentially similar 

 to those described in Agricola's De re metallica." Bromehead 

 (op. cit., footnote 1, p. 22), in referring to the date 1673 also 

 sees "no appreciable change in methods of mining since 

 Agricola." 



The history of the technology of mining, as dis- 

 tinguished from metallurgy, is largely a history of 

 mechanization, and thai mechanization has until the 

 last century consisted principally in the development 

 of what Agricola calls tractonae — hauling machines. 

 That hauling machines of some complexity, .\rchi- 

 median screws and a kind of noria, were used by the 

 Romans for dewatcring mines has been known for 

 .some lime. Evidence of the survival of this tech- 

 nology beyond the fall of Rome remains to be found, 

 and it is generally agreed that mining activity de- 

 clined through the first iniiicnium. The revival and 

 extension of mining in the central European areas of 

 German settlement is thought to have occurred from 

 the 10th century, with an intensive development of 

 the region known to Agricola (Erzgebirge) in the 

 13th century.' 



This revival appears to have paralleled in general 

 the political and cultural revival, but, as in any 

 mining region, the exhaustion of easily workable 

 surface deposits marked a critical point, when the 

 necessity of deeper mining led to the construction of 

 supported tunnels and the introduction of machinery 

 for removing ores and water from deep mines. On 

 the basis of revi.^ions cf capital structure and mining 

 law which he regards as inspired by the financial 

 necessities of deep mining, Bechtel dates this develop- 



' Parsons, op. cit. (footnote 1), p. 179. T. A. Rickard, .\lan 

 and metals, New York. 1932, vol. 2, pp. 519-521 



114 



BULLETIN 218: CONTRIBUTIONS IROM Till': MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY 



