GEOLOGY, METALLURGY, AND METEOROLOGY
Geology is essentially a nineteenth century product. Fossils, minerals,
rocks, and rock strata had attracted more or less attention from the
earliest times. The Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans had books dealing
with such subjects, and Greek philosophers, like Aristotle, lectured
upon them. But it was only in the last century that geology was placed
upon a scientific basis and began to make progress. The reformation
was begun by Cuvier's work on paleontology, the chemical and physical
discoveries of the eighteenth century, and the works of Hooke, Boyle,
Buffon, Linnæus, and others. The special technique required in
geographical research could not be developed until the biological,
anatomical, botanical, and physical sciences had been established on a
scientific plane. That is why geology remained for so many centuries
undeveloped, and then rapidly advanced during the nineteenth century.
Its preparation was long and involved, while its fruition was rapid and
brilliant.
William Smith (1769-1839), called the father of English geology, was
a mining surveyor engaged in making colliery and farm surveys in
Oxfordshire and the west of England. His professional work led him
to study the coal outcrops, and in 1793 he mapped the inclined coal
deposits in Somersetshire. The numerous rock strata accompanying
the coal beds contained fossils which he found could be used to
identify the beds in that field with others in northern counties.
He published an account of this manner of using type fossils for
identifying fossiliferous rock formations in 1799, and in 1815 issued
his geological map of England, Wales, and southern Scotland. This map
showed the advantages that scientific geology and mineralogy offered
to industry and caused scientists all over Europe to study geological
phenomena and make sketch maps of local geology.
A work on paleontology, dealing with the fossils of the Old Red
Sandstone deposits, published in England by Hugh Miller (1802-1856),
which had an enormous popularity and has been described as the most
fascinating book ever written on a geological subject, followed Smith's
"Strata Identified by Organized Fossils." A large amount of mapping
resulted from the issuing of these two works. These maps called for
detailed descriptions, and these in turn resulted in the accumulation
of many interesting data which, when collected, and systematized, led
to many important discoveries.
While these authors were preparing their books, Werner, De Luc,
De Saussure, Lamarck, and others were working out paleontological
problems, Romé de l'Isle, Brongniart, Haüy, d'Aubuisson, and others
were building up the science of mineralogy.
"The Theory of the Earth," of Dr. James Hutton (1726-1797), was
published in 1785, and in an enlarged form in 1795. This book described
the metamorphoses of sand into sandstones, quartzites, schists, and
other rock formations; the work of floods and lava floods; the
sculpturing powers of streams, rains, and winds, etc. He indicated the
effects of the alternate sinking and raising of strata through earth
shrinkings and volcanic phenomena, and taught that purely physical
causes can be found for every geological effect.
Playfair's "Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth"
augmented the teachings of Hutton's book, while works by Jameson,
Kirwan, Boué, Sir James Hall, Daubrée, St. Claire-Deville, Buckland,
Sedgwick, Bakewell, Breislak, Maclure, and others rapidly appeared
sustaining the Huttonian, or the Wernerean theories of geological
deposition.
The work of James Sowerby (1757-1822), entitled "The Mineral
Conchology of Great Britain" and that of James de Carle Sowerby
(1781-1871), published between 1812 and 1845, marked the establishment
of paleontology as a science. Both father and son were well-trained
naturalists and artists, and, like William Smith, reproduced the
fossils and their containing rocks to scale and in natural colors.
These works greatly simplified the labors of field geologists in
identifying rock strata and type fossils.
In Germany geology was worked out by Baron von Schlotheim (1764-1882),
Goldfuss (1782-1848), and Count Munster (1776-1844). Brocchi
(1772-1826) described Italian fossil strata.
The "Geological Classification of Rocks," of MacCulloch, marked
the separation of petrology as a science from descriptive geology.
MacCulloch noted that the ancient granites and granite schists are
among the oldest rock forms.
Von Humboldt, Murchison, Lyell, De la Beche, Von Buch, Elie de
Beaumont, Holley, Geikie, Bonney, Wollaston, Scrope and Daubeny
were among the pioneer geologists in Europe, while James Dwight Dana
(1818-1895), E. S. Dana, Conrad, Hitchcock, Warren, Lesley, Fremont,
and others published descriptive geological accounts in the United
States.
References to the geology and minerals of New Mexico were made in
Humboldt's "New Spain." Greenhow's work on Oregon and California,
published in 1845, and Lewis and Clark's reports added much to our
knowledge of American topography and geology. These reports were
followed by those of Stanton, Clarence King, Hague, Emmons, Custer,
Powell, Davis, Gilbert, Agassiz, and others which dealt with various
phases of American geology, paleontology, glaciation, and mineralogy,
and prepared the way for the publication of the valuable works of Dana,
Williams, Iddings, Washington, Pirsson, Clarke, Grabau, Brush, and
others.
The treatment of geological problems from the viewpoint of present
causes was begun after the publication of Lyell's "Principles of
Geology" (1830-1833). Earlier geologists were aware of the fact that
many of the rock formations had been derived from other consolidation
of sand and mud beds and by other actions which may be studied in
operation to-day. But the systematic manner in which Lyell treated the
whole field of geology made such an impression upon geologists that the
publication of his great work marked a new era in the science. De la
Beche, Buckland, Geikie, Bonney, and other geologists in England; Dana,
and a number of scientists in the United States Geological Survey, in
America; Vogt and Naumann, in Germany; Studer in Switzerland; Stopanni,
in Italy, and many specialists in other countries took up the work of
Lyell, and at present practically every important geological factor is
known and the effects of its operations have been described.
The succession of life in geological periods is studied under
paleontology. This science developed at the same time as systematic
and descriptive geology. Many great naturalists have contributed to
it. Agassiz, Hall, Dawson, Walcott, Marsh, and others in the United
States and Canada; Owen, Prestwich, and others in England; and numerous
writers in Europe have published valuable monographs on various phases
of fossil and strata-graphical geology.
Paleontology, by fixing the succession of animal and vegetable eras,
has served as a basis for measuring time, revealing the antiquity
of man and of the principal mammals, as well as showing changes in
climate, and in land and sea areas.
The application of geology to many industries called forth another
branch of the science known as economic geology. This deals with
the origin and geographical distribution of the useful minerals,
the derivation of underground waters and petroleum, and the changes
undergone by soils.
The first important impetus to economic geology was given by the
publication of Whitney's "Metallic Wealth of the United States" in
1854, Von Cotta's work on ore deposits in 1859, and the economic
references in the textbooks of the leading European and American
geologists. The recent work of Bonney, Groddeck, De Launay, Phillips,
Prosepny, Van Hise, Emmons, Le Conte, Lindgren, and others has greatly
advanced the interest and usefulness of the science.
These writers carried out an extended series of investigations on the
depth temperature and physical and chemical condition of the earth's
crust. Chemical analyses of rocks and soils were made and the changes
wrought by physical and chemical forces were noted. On these were
based theories as to the formation of rocks, soils, minerals, and ore
deposits. The erosive properties of soil water were found to be limited
to a depth not exceeding 20,000 feet, although hydrostatic water bodies
are rarely found as low as half that distance, the rise in temperature
precluding their existence. The work of these men revealed the part
played by vulcanism in rock changes, and the effects produced through
hot solutions and magmatic intrusions.
Various systems of classification of minerals and ore deposits were
developed. Richard Beck's, "The Nature of Ore Deposits" (1900), and
Lindgren's "Mineral Deposits" (1919), are works which have contributed
to the systematizing of economic geology from the mineral standpoint,
and the establishment of epochs of metal generation.
The ore deposits of the United States have been described in the
monographs of the United States Geological Survey, and by Kemp, Spurr,
Grabau and other writers.
This branch of geology emphasizes the strong tendency to concentration
shown by mineral elements. All climatic forces are found to aid this
work. Underground waters, both flowing and stationary, are powerful
assistants.
Other phases of economic geology have been developed in studies of
subterranean waters, microscopical petrology and mineralogy, the
chemical analyses of rocks, etc. Among the leaders in this work have
been Pirsson, Emmons, Iddings, Washington, Van Hise, Clarke, and others.
The enormous metallurgical industries of to-day are all dependent upon
scientific principles chiefly discovered and applied in the nineteenth
century.
Metallurgists in the previous century knew that by adding certain
metals to molten steel it could be hardened. A method of this kind was
published by Réaumur in 1722. Tool points, he showed, could be hardened
if the steel when red hot was forced into solid tin, lead, copper,
silver or gold, thus producing an alloy stronger and harder than the
pure steel.
A series of calorimetric researches on metallic alloys, carried on by
Bergman, led to the discovery that steel differs from iron merely in
the carbon contents. Clouet, in 1798, followed this by an experiment in
which he melted up a little crucible iron with a diamond and obtained
a mass of steel. This created a sensation and led to many other
experiments on the metallurgy of cast and wrought iron and steel.
Thomas Young, in 1802-7, studied the mechanical properties of iron and
steel and developed the theory of the modulus of elasticity. A patent
was issued to the Rev. Robert Stirling, in 1817, for a regenerative
iron smelting furnace. The next year Samuel Baldwin Rogers substituted
iron bottoms for sand bottoms in puddling furnaces. Faraday and Stodart
produced the first alloy of nickel and steel in 1820, and in 1822
Faraday showed that there is a fundamental chemical difference between
hard and soft steel.
The first patent for a hot blast for iron furnaces was granted to James
Beaumont Neilson in 1828. All these discoveries led to important
improvements in iron making.
The steam hammer was patented by Nasmyth in 1842, and between 1843 and
1848 Thomas Andrews conducted valuable investigations into the heat of
combination.
The ground was now prepared for one of the greatest of metallurgical
inventions--the conversion of pig iron into steel by an air blast in a
Bessemer converter. This invention not only vastly extended the use of
steel, but drew attention to the valuable oxidizing effects of a hot
air blast and in that way induced many important improvements in the
metallurgy of copper, lead, and zinc.
Siemens, Whitworth, Bell, Graham, Percy, Richards, Martin, Thomas,
Holley, Hewitt, Fritz, Howe, Jones, and others made further important
improvements in the metallurgy of iron and steel in the United States
and Europe.
One of the early American iron smelters was built by Governor Keith,
in 1726, in New Castle County, Delaware. A rolling mill and forge were
subsequently built at Wilmington. The first American smelted iron was
shipped to England from smelters in Maryland and Virginia in 1718. The
Bessemer steel process was introduced into the United States by Abram
Hewitt at the Troy smelter, New York, in 1865. From these beginnings
the iron industries of the United States have grown so that they now
produce more than two-fifths of the world's annual supplies.
The alloys of iron and steel have now attained importance and a new
science known as metallography has developed. Professor Arnold, of
Sheffield, Sherard Cowper-Coles, Roberts-Austen, Sorby, Tschermak,
Tschernoff, Wüst, and Ziegler have been active promoters of this branch
of metallurgy, and a closely related one dealing with the effects of
the heat treatment of metals.
Developments in the iron industries led to others in the metallurgy of
copper, lead, and zinc.
The application of the blast furnace to copper, lead, and zinc smelting
was chiefly made in America. One of the early furnaces was built in
Leadville, Colorado, in 1877. From that time, pyritic smelting has been
chiefly developed by American metallurgists. The metallurgy of lead,
copper, and zinc has reached a similar high plane to that attained by
iron and steel.
The metallurgy of gold and silver began to improve after the
discovery of the Californian deposits in 1848. The stamper battery
and amalgamation processes were improved; when sulphide ores were
encountered, chlorination processes were developed. Subsequently, in
response to demand for a cheaper chemical solvent for low-grade ores,
the cyanide and bromide processes were devised.
The application of the electric furnace to metallurgy greatly increased
the scope of metallurgists' methods.
Pichon, in 1853, described a small arc furnace with which he was
experimenting, and in 1878 Sir William Siemens built a furnace for
reducing iron ores. Moissan made numerous tests of furnaces and
smelting methods in the nineties and did much to develop commercial
electric smelting. Faure, Cowles, Borchers, De Chalmont, Girod,
Heroult, and others invented furnaces, smelting methods, and
metallurgical processes. The aluminum, carborundum, acetylene, and
other important industries are developments from the electrometallurgy
of iron and copper. Zinc, copper, nickel, silver, gold, and platinum
plating and the electrodepositing of copper in the form of tubes by the
Elmore process are dependent upon the principles of electrometallurgy
as is the electrorefining of metals.
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The physical phenomena of the earth's atmosphere are studied under the
science of meteorology.
The art of weather forecasting is as old almost as mankind, but only in
recent years has it been placed upon a sound basis.
Torricelli, in 1643, invented the barometer; Boyle, in 1685,
developed it and applied it to measuring gas pressures. The chemists
of the eighteenth century, Boyle, Black, Rutherford, Priestley,
Scheele, Lavoisier, and Cavendish, all studied the chemistry of the
atmosphere. Franklin, in 1749, raised thermometers by kites to measure
temperatures. Balloon ascents were made by Jefferies and Blanchard,
in 1784, for atmospheric observations. Soundings of the upper air by
balloons, kites, and other apparatus have been conducted since the
closing years of the nineteenth century.