Minerals, Wealth and Progress - Mining and the Environment: From Ore to Metal - page 5

TABLE 1.1
(Continued)

Date Event

1716 First school of mines established, at Joachimstal, Czechoslovakia

1780 Beginning of Industrial Revolution; pumps are fi rst modern machines used in mining

1800s American gold rushes help open the West

1815 Sir Humphrey Davy invented miner's safety lamp in England

1843 First mining boom occurs in the US with copper deposits in the Keweenaw Peninsula of Michigan and the Mesabi Iron Range

of northern Minnesota

1851 Beginning of the Australian gold rushes by the discovery of gold by Edward Hargraves (resulting in 370,000 new immigrants to

Australia in the following year alone)

1866 Discovery of the fi rst diamond, the Eureka, in the Kimberley Diamond Fields in South Africa

1865 Invention of electro refi ning by Elkington

1867 Dynamite invented by Nobel, applied to mining

1900 Era of mechanization and mass production

1907 Invention of Froth fl otation in Australia by Potter

1909 Invention of converting by Pierce and Smith

1940s First application of solvent extraction technology (solution mining) to uranium purifi cation

1949 Installation of fi rst Flash Smelter (First Outokumpu Furnace)

1963 Solvent Extraction/Electro-winning process developed in Arizona as a means of obtaining copper from oxide ore

1970 NEPA (National Environment Protection Act) promulgated in the USA, signalling the beginning of formal environmental

assessment procedures, which rapidly spread to other countries.

1989 Closure of the Bougainville Copper Mine on Bougainville Island, PNG due to civil unrest

Source:
based on Hartman (1987)

reference, 'Gold' by Kettell (1982) provides a thorough history of the one metal that has
captivated the imagination more than any other. Further authoritative reviews of mining
history can be found in Gregory (1981), Boyns (1997) and Meyerriecks (2003).

Mining Today

Dramatic improvements in mining and mineral processing technologies have effected two
main changes in modern mining operations, as compared with mining practices of less