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between 20 to 25 percent manganese oxide, about 1 percent nickel, a 
half a percent cobalt and from a half to 114 percent copper. 
There is also a significant quantity of iron in the miner but it is, 
as yet, uneconomic to recover and then detrio] materials such as the 
calcium carbonate and silica. 
The Newport News Shipyard, which is in Mr. Downing’s district, 
has had long experience in developing hydraulic machinery and ships. 
It was the decision of the company to try and put these two capa- 
bilities together in a study to determine the economic feasibility of 
recovering these surficial deposits from the deep ocean floor. 
The slide shows a hydraulic turbine runner. This type of hydraulic 
equipment in the 200,000 to 300,000 horsepower range is a standard 
product of that company, also a Tenneco subsidiary, and it was this 
understanding of hydraulic engineering that led us to our original 
investigations. 
Our first effort was the chartering of a very common trawler and 
going out to the Blake Plateau area where we lowered dredges and 
recovered significant quantities of manganese nodules. 
Our search then took us with chartered ships through the North 
Atlantic where the actual deposits were found to be relatively scarce 
and of relatively low quality. | 
We then proceeded, in the shipyard program, to search the topo- 
graphic highs, those areas where the deep Pacific rises to a depth of 
less than 2 miles, where we searched for a period of 2 years finding 
many interesting deposits and enough complications to suggest that 
our efforts should be extended to greater depths. 
A data bank was compiled through exchange of assays for samples 
and locations with outfits such as the London Museum, Scripps, Woods 
Hole, other oceanographic institutions, and the universities as well as 
the Government agencies that were involved in deep ocean sampling. 
This data bank contains some 30,000 points and we use these to 
guide us in our present exploration activities, 
The result of the Newport News program was the design of a min- 
ing system and application for a series of patents. It is described in 
the paper that is in your folder and essentially looks like this. 
There would be a mining ship capable of handling the dredge sys- 
tem and pipeline that would actually recover the nodules from the 
sea floor and pump them to a transfer barge or ore carrier. 
The recovery would be accomplished by the dragging across the 
ocean floor of a gathering head and then the pumping of the recovered 
material up the pipe and to the dredge ship. 
The work that: was done at the shipyard included extensive labora- 
tory, engineering, design and computer studies. This is an example 
of the reconstructed ocean floor, the nodules distributed exactly as 
found in the deep ocean as recorded by photographs. 
The gathering head is in the upper part of the picture and it is 
capable of going through this deposit rejecting the oversized nodules 
and collecting the nodules that could safely go up the pipe and through 
the pump. : j 
Extensive experiments were done to determine the powers required 
and the amount of material that could be brought up a pipe. Here we 
see some modules moving through a 4-inch plastic pipe and we are 
delighted to report that the powers required are nominal, in the range 
