358 



National Resources Planning Board 



The researches of Hall in the ahiininum-nietallurgy 

 field provide a classic and outstanding example of the 

 titanic contributions that chcniistn' can bring to 

 metallurgy and the mining industry. The magnetic 

 prospecting for metallic ore deposits provide as great 

 a tribute to the geophysicist in this field. The Frasch 

 process for the extraction of sulfin- provides an equally 

 classic example of the -work of the geophysicist in a 

 nonmetaUic mining field. The introduction of hot 

 water through pipe drills to sulfur deposits to melt the 

 sulfur, and the subsequent forcing in of air under 

 pressure, and the literal blowing to the surface of 99 

 percent pure sulfur, the whole operation being con- 

 ducted through a single set of three concentric pipes 

 sunk at one drilling, has further advanced the whole 

 sulfur-mining industry than a century of previous work. 



The mining and processing of asbestos exemplifies to 

 a high degree the contributions of geochemistry and 

 geophj'sics to both the production and processing of a 

 unique and valuable product. Asbestos varies in 

 quality enormously with the nature of its deposits and 

 to a certain extent with the method of its extraction. 

 These differences are very largely related to the nature 

 of the ores with which it is associated, and the methods 

 for the essays of these ores have been almost entirely 

 the work of the geologist and his physical and chemical 

 congeners. The processing of the material is an even 

 more critical business, and here the geochemist and 

 the geophysicist, and especially the former, are all- 

 important. Very recently the geochemist has been 

 able to demonstrate that asbestos maj' be combined 

 mechanically with certain other substances to yield a 

 product having a whole new range of physical proper- 

 ties, unsuspected hitherto for asbestos, while none of 

 its known valuable qualities are sacrificed. This opens 

 up a very large, and entirely new field for the geo- 

 chemist of the very greatest interest. 



The petroleum and natural-gas mdustry is one which 

 is especially indebted to the geophysicist on the pros- 

 pecting and to the chemist on the refining and prepara- 

 tive sides. The geophysicist has completely revolu- 

 tionized the once cumbersome technique of oil pros- 

 pecting by his development of gravitational methods, 

 described elsewhere in this report. The production of 

 sturdy field equipment, for the simultaneous detection 

 of both the vertical and horizontal components of the 

 force of gravity, of sufficient delicacy to identify the 

 presence of large masses of subterranean water or salt 

 in the "salt domes," yet so rugged as to permit of its 

 transport across country by truck and its continuous 

 use at a field site, represents an important contribution 

 to the advance of a major industry. Very recently 

 the geophysicist has made another outstanding contri- 

 bution to this field, unexpectedly enough by an applica- 

 tion of the mass spectrograph, whose original designers 



sm-ely had in mind for it applications far different 

 from those of the petroleum industry. It has been 

 found possible, by making very careful borings in an 

 area suspected of containing petroleum and taking 

 progressive gas samplings, to detect with the mass 

 spectrograph the existence of heavy petroleum mole- 

 cules in concentrations heretofore far too low for identi- 

 fication. By checking at intervals along the explora- 

 tory shaft, it is possible to identify increases in concen- 

 tration of petroleum gases, with the consequent proba- 

 bility of the proximit}' of oil, with a rapidity and above 

 all a delicacy which would have staggered the imagina- 

 tion of any petroleum industrialist but a very short 

 time ago. 



If the work of the geophysicist is all-important in 

 the prospecting of petroleum, that of the chemist is 

 equally so in the preparation of the product, once 

 obtained. The complex maze of modern refining and 

 fractionating processes, the entire science of cracking, 

 the existence of the present range of special-purpose 

 treated petroleum products, are all the work of the field 

 chemist, aided by the piu"e petrolemn chemist of the lab- 

 oratory. To these two do we owe two things of tremen- 

 dous importance in petroleum affairs — the enormous 

 range of uses to which petroleum products can be put, 

 and the great abundance of suitable petrolemn crack- 

 ing and fractionation products for the immense drain 

 wliich their principal use as a fuel puts upon the existing 

 natural supply. These are vital contributions indeed. 



Not the least important field in which the geochemist 

 and the geophysicist have worked has been that of coal 

 mining, a field requiring whoUy different techniques 

 from those pertaining to any other extractive process. 

 To a greater degree than elsewhere, perhaps, these 

 have been contributed by the mining engineer. The 

 identification of coal strata, however, has been very 

 considerably the task of the geologist, and research 

 in the preparation of the product has fallen predomi- 

 nantly on the shoulders of the geochemist and geophysi- 

 cist. We owe to them the present range of uses of 

 coal and coal products. 



The study of soils and of the processes of erosion is 

 peculiar to geolog}^ and to geochemistrj^ and geophysics. 

 Like seismography, water research, weather study, and 

 geodesy, it tends at once to requii-e research on so large 

 a scale, and its results tend to be of such general national 

 value that it properly belongs rather to the field of 

 national than of industrial research. However, its 

 results are of such interest to agricultural industry that 

 it surely merits passing notice in a treatment of this 

 kind. The study of the physical characters of the soil, 

 all-important to agriculture, is the work of the geophysi- 

 cist. It has been carried fonvard in the last years in 

 the United States and in the Union of Soviet Socialist 

 Republics to a greater extent than anywhere else in the 



