In order to separate metallic ores from the barren rock or stones with
which they occur, and to promote their fusion, it is necessary that
the pieces of rock or stone should be reduced to small fragments by
stamping them. For those ores which occur in a sandy form, this is
unnecessary; and in regard to rich silver ore, which contains very
little or no lead and other metals, this process might be hurtful; for
with dry stamping a great deal would fly off in dust, and with wet
stamping a considerable part would be washed away by the water.
However imperfect the knowledge of the ancients may have been in
regard to the fusion of ores, they were acquainted with the benefit of
stamping; but the means they employed for that purpose were the most
inconvenient and expensive. They reduced the ore to coarse powder,
by pounding it in mortars, and then ground it in hand-mills, like
those used for corn, till it acquired such a degree of fineness that
it could be easily washed. This is proved by the scanty information
which we find in Diodorus Siculus[832] and Agatharcides[833], in
regard to the gold mines of the Egyptians; in Hippocrates, respecting
the smelting-works of the Greeks[834], and in Pliny in regard to the
metallurgy of the Romans[835]. Remains of such mortars and mills as
were used by the ancients have been found in places where they carried
on metallurgic operations; for instance, in Transylvania and the
Pyrenees. The hand-mills had a resemblance to our mustard-mills[836];
and for washing the mud they employed a sieve, but in washing
auriferous sand they made use of a raw hide. From the latter, Count von
Veltheim has explained, in a very ingenious manner, the fable of the
ancients concerning the ants which dug up gold[837].
Our works for pounding ore, at present, are stamping-mills, which
consist of heavy stampers shod with iron. These stampers are put
in motion by a cylinder furnished with cogs, which is driven by a
water-wheel, and pound the ore in troughs lined with iron. When the
ore subjected to this operation is poor, water is introduced into the
troughs, which running through grates in the bottoms of them, carries
with it the pounded matter into a gutter, where it becomes purified,
and deposits the mud mixed with sand.
One might conjecture that this apparatus was invented soon after the
invention of cylinders with cogs; but this was not the case, though I
am not able to determine the antiquity of these cylinders. At any rate,
it is certain that mortars and sieves were used in Germany throughout
the whole of the fifteenth century; and in France, to which the art
of mining was conveyed in general from that country at a late period,
they were still employed about the year 1579[838]. In the oldest times
men were not acquainted with the art of employing water at mines in so
advantageous a manner as at present. The bellows were worked by men;
and those aqueducts raised on posts, by which distant water may be made
to act on machines, was not yet invented. On this account, remains
of ore are found in places where the moderns, in consequence of that
indispensable article water, would not be able to maintain metallurgic
works[839]. According to the researches which I have hitherto had
an opportunity to make, our stamping-mills were invented about the
beginning of the sixteenth century, and, as appears, in Germany; but I
cannot determine with certainty either the name of the inventor or his
country. Those who established or introduced the first stamping-works
in Saxony and the Harz are only mentioned; and these, as usual, have
been considered as the inventors.
In the year 1519 the processes of sifting and wet-stamping were
established in Joachimsthal by Paul Grommestetter, a native of
Schwarz, named on that account the Schwarzer, whom Melzer praises as
an ingenious and active washer; and we are told that he had before
introduced the same improvements at Schneeberg. Soon after, that is
in 1521, a large stamping-work was erected at Joachimsthal, and the
process of washing was begun. A considerable saving was thus made, as
a great many metallic particles were before left in the washed sand,
which was either thrown away or used as mortar for building. In the
year 1525 Hans Pörtner employed at Schlackenwalde the wet method of
stamping, whereas before that period the ore there was ground.
In the Harz this invention was introduced at Wildenmann by Peter
Philip, who was assay-master there, soon after the works at the Upper
Harz were resumed by Duke Henry the younger about the year 1524. This
we learn from the papers of Herdan Hacke or Hæcke, who was preacher
at Wildenmann in 1572. As far as can be concluded from his imperfect
information, the first stamping-work there consisted only of a stamper
raised by means of two levers fixed to the axis of a wheel. The pounded
ore was then thrown into a sieve, called in German the _sachs_[840],
and freed from the coarser parts. But as this stamping was performed
in the dry manner, it produced so much dust that the labourers were
impeded by it, and the ore on that account could not be properly
smelted. The business however was not given up; new improvements were
made, and soon after Simon Krug and Nicholas Klerer introduced the wet
method, and fortunately brought it to perfection[841].
It is said in several modern works that wet stamping was invented in
1505, by a Saxon nobleman named von Maltitz. This assertion has been
so often repeated, that it was known to Gobet[842], who adopted it as
truth. I have not however been able to find the historian on whose
testimony it is founded; but it appears by Gauhen’s Dictionary of
Nobility that Sigismund Maltitz was chief surveyor of forests at the
Erzgebürge, to the electorate of Saxony in the sixteenth century.