Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
2.1. Brief History of Coal Mining
Stanley R. Michalski
Dragline removing overburden in the Jharia
Coalfield, state of Jharkhand, India.
Photo by Stanley R. Michalski, 1994.
Introduction
M
an has mined coal from the time he learned to control and use fire as a source of heat for cooking and keeping
warm. There is no clear point in time when coal was first used. Early man, however, was in tune with his
environment and to survive he had to use what the environment offered. The black rock that burned was first
collected by scraping it from the rocky outcrops where it was exposed. This was the first method of mining coal.
Coal
s use, however, was limited. Wood was the principal source of energy for heating and cooking as it was
available just about anywhere man settled.
'
Evolution of Coal Mining
T
he use of coal for energy was slow to develop. In Europe
was mined by simply picking it off the
beaches where it was deposited after being eroded from coal outcrops both above and below sea level
(Lindbergh and Provorse, 1980, p. 18). Since wood was much easier to acquire and utilize, coal was largely
ignored until the Industrial Revolution. Coal
“
sea coal
”
'
s first industrial use was for smelting and working metals. Coal
could achieve the heat required to work metals where charcoal from wood by itself could not. In the early
1700s, there was an increasing need for fuel for heating and to drive small burgeoning industries. Wood was
still the universal fuel, but, by the eighteenth century, wood was becoming scarce and expensive and in
England was even being imported (Oosthoek, 2008). Early industry used coal that was extracted from near
the ground surface where it was easy to mine. Initially, coal exposed on a hillside was mined by following
the coal seam, horizontally into the ground. This became the drift mine which followed the coal for
hundreds of meters leaving behind blocks of coal to support the roof of the mine. Another form of mining
developed where the coal seam occurred below the ground surface and a shallow shaft was dug to reach the
coal. This became the bell pit (Lindbergh and Provorse, 1980, p. 36). The bell pit would be expanded within
the coal seam until the erstwhile miners were threatened by collapsing walls. Then a new bell pit would be
created adjacent to the old one. In the 1700s, drift mines and bell pits were small-scale, coal-mining
operations where the coal was close to the surface and used locally for home heating and small scale
industry.
As the mines got deeper by following the coal seam into the hill or down an incline, flooding of the mine workings
and suffocation of the workers as well as explosive, combustible, and poisonous gases became very real dangers. A
spark from a pick axe, a flame from a candle, or from a miner lamp could trigger a disastrous underground
explosion. Pockets of gas rich in carbon dioxide or low in oxygen content could render a miner unconscious.
Consequently, removing water and dangerous gases from a working mine became a necessity. Despite these
improvements in safety, coal mining became more and more dangerous for those who went into the pits and
underground mines. The deepening mines also had to cope with the increasing weight of the overburden. The
underground network of passages within the mines was supported with blocks of coal left in place and wooden
poles or props cut from a nearby wood lot. A thin line often existed between the quantity of coal to leave behind for
