Edison, His Life and Inventions [184]
of his times has made the effort. A special experimental track has been laid at the Orange laboratory, and a car equipped with the Edison storage battery and other devices has been put under severe and extended trial there and in New York.
Menlo Park, in ruin and decay, affords no traces of the early Edison electric-railway work, but the crude little locomotive built by Charles T. Hughes was rescued from destruction, and has become the property of the Pratt Institute, of Brooklyn, towhose thousands of technical students it is a constant example and incentive. It was loaned in 1904 to the Association of Edison Illuminating Companies, and by it exhibited as part of the historical Edison collection at the St. Louis Exposition.
EDISON HIS LIFE AND INVENTIONS
CHAPTER XIX
MAGNETIC ORE MILLING WORK
DURING the Hudson-Fulton celebration of October, 1909, Burgomaster Van Leeuwen, of Amsterdam, member of the delegation sent officially from Holland to escort the Half Moon and participate in the functions of the anniversary, paid a visit to the Edison laboratory at Orange to see the inventor, who may be regarded as pre-eminent among those of Dutch descent in this country. Found, as usual, hard at work--this time on his cement house, of which he showed the iron molds--Edison took occasion to remark that if he had achieved anything worth while, it was due to the obstinacy and pertinacity he had inherited from his forefathers. To which it may be added that not less equally have the nature of inheritance and the quality of atavism been exhibited in his extraordinary predilection for the miller's art. While those Batavian ancestors on the low shores of the Zuyder Zee devoted their energies to grinding grain, he has been not less assiduous than they in reducing the rocks of the earth itself to flour.
Although this phase of Mr. Edison's diverse activities is not as generally known to the world as many others of a more popular character, the milling of low-grade auriferous ores and the magnetic separation of iron ores have been subjects of engrossing interest and study to him for many years. Indeed, his comparatively unknown enterprise of separating magnetically and putting into commercial form low- grade iron ore, as carried on at Edison, New Jersey, proved to be the most colossal experiment that he has ever made.
If a person qualified to judge were asked to answer categorically as to whether or not that enterprise was a failure, he could truthfully answer both yes and no. Yes, in that circumstances over which Mr. Edison had no control compelled the shutting down of the plant at the very moment of success; and no, in that the mechanically successful and commercially practical results obtained, after the exercise of stupendous efforts and the expenditure of a fortune, are so conclusive that they must inevitably be the reliance of many future iron-masters. In other words, Mr. Edison was at least a quarter of a century ahead of the times in the work now to be considered.
Before proceeding to a specific description of this remarkable enterprise, however, let us glance at an early experiment in separating magnetic iron sands on the Atlantic sea-shore: "Some years ago I heard one day that down at Quogue, Long Island, there were immense deposits of black magnetic sand. This would be very valuable if the iron could be separated from the sand. So I went down to Quogue with one of my assistants and saw there for miles large beds of black sand on the beach in layers from one to six inches thick--hundreds of thousands of tons. My first thought was that it would be a very easy matter to concentrate this, and I found I could sell the stuff at a good price. I put up a small plant, but just as I got it started a tremendous storm came up, and every bit of that black sand went out to sea. During the twenty-eight years that have intervened it has never come back." This incident was really the prelude to the development set forth in this chapter.
In the early eighties Edison became familiar with the fact that the Eastern steel trade
Menlo Park, in ruin and decay, affords no traces of the early Edison electric-railway work, but the crude little locomotive built by Charles T. Hughes was rescued from destruction, and has become the property of the Pratt Institute, of Brooklyn, towhose thousands of technical students it is a constant example and incentive. It was loaned in 1904 to the Association of Edison Illuminating Companies, and by it exhibited as part of the historical Edison collection at the St. Louis Exposition.
EDISON HIS LIFE AND INVENTIONS
CHAPTER XIX
MAGNETIC ORE MILLING WORK
DURING the Hudson-Fulton celebration of October, 1909, Burgomaster Van Leeuwen, of Amsterdam, member of the delegation sent officially from Holland to escort the Half Moon and participate in the functions of the anniversary, paid a visit to the Edison laboratory at Orange to see the inventor, who may be regarded as pre-eminent among those of Dutch descent in this country. Found, as usual, hard at work--this time on his cement house, of which he showed the iron molds--Edison took occasion to remark that if he had achieved anything worth while, it was due to the obstinacy and pertinacity he had inherited from his forefathers. To which it may be added that not less equally have the nature of inheritance and the quality of atavism been exhibited in his extraordinary predilection for the miller's art. While those Batavian ancestors on the low shores of the Zuyder Zee devoted their energies to grinding grain, he has been not less assiduous than they in reducing the rocks of the earth itself to flour.
Although this phase of Mr. Edison's diverse activities is not as generally known to the world as many others of a more popular character, the milling of low-grade auriferous ores and the magnetic separation of iron ores have been subjects of engrossing interest and study to him for many years. Indeed, his comparatively unknown enterprise of separating magnetically and putting into commercial form low- grade iron ore, as carried on at Edison, New Jersey, proved to be the most colossal experiment that he has ever made.
If a person qualified to judge were asked to answer categorically as to whether or not that enterprise was a failure, he could truthfully answer both yes and no. Yes, in that circumstances over which Mr. Edison had no control compelled the shutting down of the plant at the very moment of success; and no, in that the mechanically successful and commercially practical results obtained, after the exercise of stupendous efforts and the expenditure of a fortune, are so conclusive that they must inevitably be the reliance of many future iron-masters. In other words, Mr. Edison was at least a quarter of a century ahead of the times in the work now to be considered.
Before proceeding to a specific description of this remarkable enterprise, however, let us glance at an early experiment in separating magnetic iron sands on the Atlantic sea-shore: "Some years ago I heard one day that down at Quogue, Long Island, there were immense deposits of black magnetic sand. This would be very valuable if the iron could be separated from the sand. So I went down to Quogue with one of my assistants and saw there for miles large beds of black sand on the beach in layers from one to six inches thick--hundreds of thousands of tons. My first thought was that it would be a very easy matter to concentrate this, and I found I could sell the stuff at a good price. I put up a small plant, but just as I got it started a tremendous storm came up, and every bit of that black sand went out to sea. During the twenty-eight years that have intervened it has never come back." This incident was really the prelude to the development set forth in this chapter.
In the early eighties Edison became familiar with the fact that the Eastern steel trade