president's address — SECTION B, 129 



metal free from contamination with other metals that are present, 

 which is a mere bagatelle for the converter and the pyrite furnace, 

 even on the largest scale, is a serious task for the electric furr.ace. 



Economic Benefits. — The economic benefits of the intensified 

 pneumatic methods cannot be over-estimated. In their special field 

 they have reduced the expenditure of carbonaceous fuel, labor, and 

 materials, and last but not least, of time, to a stupendous degree. In the 

 mere matter of fuel alone their practically complete emancipation from 

 all natural sources of supply of either wood or coal is conferring incalcu- 

 able boons on industry at large by cutting off the prolonged additional 

 ravages incident to a continuance of the older methods. In point of 

 labor and time they have contributed to condense a toilsome series 

 of calcinations and roastings into a single operation, proceeding, literally, 

 on the wings of the wind. In point of administration, business has 

 been extraordinarily simplified by them. Along the old lines it would 

 be physically impossible to achieve modern tonnages. At Mount 

 Lyell, for instance, where the pneumatic method is applied to ore as 

 well as to mattes, it is safe to say that 4,000 men would be required — 

 furnace-men, woodcutters, and all — to carry on what 1,000 are doing 

 now. The dispersion of an equivalent quantity of older, numerously 

 duplicated apparatus over the necessary vast area of ground would, 

 furthermore, practically frustrate efficient management, altogether 

 aside from questions of transportation and the fuel bill. 



The extent to which this superiority is realised by the world is 

 clearly manifested by the manner in which the introduction of the 

 rapid oxidation of mattes has found a foothold in the copper industry. 

 In 1886 there were but two establishments u'^ing it, practically only 

 tentatively, i.e., the parent works at Eguilles and the Parrott Works 

 at Butte. Three years later it was iiistalled at the great Anaconda 

 plant, at Swansea, at Bogoslowsk in Russia, Maitenes in Chili, Leghorn 

 in Italy, Jerez-Lanteira in Spain. Roros in Norway. It has since be- 

 come established in Mexico, Japan, Canada, and British Columbia, 

 Servia, and Australia, including Tasmania. Its real camping ground, 

 however, are the United States of America. There 30 converters 

 were in continual operation by 1899, annually producing about 160,000 

 tons of copper, together with 9,000,000ozs. of silver and 30,000ozs. of 

 of gold. Since then the converter process has immenesly progressed 

 there in size and perfection of apparatus and number of localities. 

 It has permitted out-of-the-way works to send out blister, where before 

 they would have dispatched matte — an important circumstance, which 

 itself has worked a complete reformation in the commercial features 

 of the industry, far-reaching but not to be gone into here. In 1905 

 the production of copper in North America alone was, in round figures, 

 ■180,000 tons, of which about 75 per cent, were poured out of converters, 

 and for the production of which, roughly, about a sixfold tonnage of 

 air was blown into the vessels. 



Scientific Benefits. — However, there is another direction in which 



the growth of pneumatic smelting has, in a marked degree, made for 



advancement. Its caloric features and peculiarities have widened, 



and will continue to widen, the horizon of the practising metallurgist. 



I 



