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John Hays Hammond

HOUGH personally one of the quietest of men, Mr. Hammond occupies a position as a mining engineer probably second to no other man in this country, if he is to be judged by his responsibilities and the salary he draws. As consulting engineer of the vast interests of the Guggenheim Exploration Company, Mr. Hammond is said to receive $500,000 a year. At any rate he has attained wealth at his profession and lives in a princely style at Lakewood, N. J. Mr. Hammond is a native of California, and was at one time consulting engineer of the Central Pacific and Southern Pacific railways. He is a graduate of the Yale Scientific School and of the Royal School of Mines in Saxony. He was sent by the geological survey to examine the gold fields of California, and his interest became so intense

that he made the study of mines and mining properties his life work. The tremendously rich Barnato brothers of London sent Mr. Hammond to report on their mines in South Africa. It was while there that he became associated with Dr. Jameson and mixed up in the movements that led to the Jameson Raid. He was one of the five men sentenced to be hung for his activities in Transvaal reforms, and only escaped by paying $125,000 for his freedom. He returned to London and was sent to Mexico by one of the largest English syndicates to investigate the ore fields. The Guggenheim Exploration Company snapped him up and made him general manager of probably the largest mining concern in the world. Mr. Hammond is married to the daughter of Judge J. W. M. Harris, of Mississippi, and has four sons. He is special lecturer attached to the faculties of several of the leading American universities, and is a member of many of the

Copyright, 1907, by Technical World Company.

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large engineering clubs and societies in this country. He is the president of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers, of New York, to which society Mr. Carnegie recently gave one and one-half million dollars for their new building just completed in that city. Mr. Hammond created a stir when he announced his discovery of the fabulous mines of

King Solomon, locating them in one of his exploration trips in central South Africa. Rider Haggard has weaved one of his novels around them. Archaeological inyestigation in a measure corroborated Mr. Hammond's opinion. Mr. Hammond has offices in New York, London and Denver, and is a familiar figure in many mining camps of the West.

Edward Goodrich Acheson

DWARD GOODRICH ACHESON, inventor of carborundum and siloxicon, and in a broad sense also of artificial graphite, is a man who possesses advanced ideas at variance with accepted faiths. His was a long struggle for recognition, extending over a period of some twenty years. But imaginative and optimistic, as well as self-reliant and determined, he succeeded.

Born of Scotch stock in Bellefonte, Pa., in 1856, Mr. Acheson attended the Bellefonte Academy until his seventeenth year, when he left school to give his time to the perfecting of a drilling machine, for which he took out a patent in 1872. During his odd moments he devoted his time to the study of chemistry and electricity. At nineteen years of age he built a dynamo of original design; and in 1880 he began experimenting with a crude electric furnace.

His career may be said to have begun in 1882, when he found employment as a draughtsman at Menlo Park with Thomas A. Edison. His ability so impressed Edison that he was taken from the draughting room and sent to the lamp factory to learn the details of that branch of the business. So successful was he that he was dispatched to Europe by Edison, where he spent several years installing electric light plants.

Returning to America, he severed his connection with Edison, and in 1891 en tered on the experiments which resulted in the invention of carborundum. Having at his command an electric generating plant of considerable capacity, he

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rigged up a crude furnace and began work. He had noted in an early experi ment in passing hydrocarbon gas over highly heated clay that the clay became impregnated with carbon. So following along that line, he thought to try the effect of impregnating clay with carbon under the influence of the high temperatures of the electric furnace. He mixed a quantity of clay and carbon in an iron bowl, such as is used by plumbers for holding their melted solder. Into this mixture he inserted one end of an electric light carbon, the other end being attached to the bowl. A strong current was sent through the mixture until the central portion was thoroughly melted. Adhering to the end of the carbon rod he noticed a small bright speck, which, when it was placed on the end of a lead pencil, not only scratched but cut the glass. That was the first carborundum ever made. He produced more of the crystals, and by making some changes in his methods, using sand in place of clay, he found that he could make them in considerable quantities.

A study of the properties of the new substance showed that it was intensely hard, intensely sharp, and infusible at any known heat. These properties suggested that it was peculiarly fitted for abrasive purposes. But the price at which it could be marketed was almost prohibitive, running up into dollars per pound. He very carefully graded a quantity of the crystals, put them in a vial, and went to New York to interview the gem cutters, who smiled wisely, but were finally persuaded into trying the new substance. It did the work, and the Carborundum company was organized and financed. In 1895 the

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company established itself at Niagara "the skeleton of the original carborunFalls.

The uses of carborundum increased as knowledge of its properties became known. Dentists found it superior to any other substance they could get for shaping teeth, and as the price decreased the granite polisher found use for it to the exclusion of all other polishing materials. In a short time it made its way into the machine shops and the shoe factories. The pottery trade employs it for smoothing "biscuit ware." Wherever an abrasive is needed carborundum is used.

In his many experiments with carborundum Mr. Acheson discovered that when it is heated to a very high temperature decomposition occurs, the tained silica being dissipated as vapor, leaving behind, as Mr. Acheson calls it,

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dum crystals," in the form of graphite. From that discovery has sprung an industry which promises as large a measure of commercial success as carborundum enjoys. It is found to be immeasurably superior to amorphous graphite, which it has supplanted in the electrochemical and electro-metallurgical industries. In pulverized form it is used for filtration, stove polish, lubricant and paint pigment.

Lately Mr. Acheson has been experimenting with a substance which he calls siloxicon (Si2 C20), which is also the product of the electric furnace, and which is produced by the reduction of silica. This substance is found to be most admirably adapted for crucibles, muffles, bricks and for similar purposes.

Elmer Lawrence Corthell

R. CORTHELL might be called an All-American, so long has he been an important factor in the engineering projects of various regions of the Western. hemisphere. Probably there is is no man in America who knows more about jetties, levees, ship canals and ship railroads than does Mr. Corthell. Mr. Corthell has designed and constructed more great bridges across the Mississippi, Ohio and other North and South American rivers than probably any other engineer. He built the longest steel bridge in the world,-that at Cairo, over the Ohio river, for the Illinois Central railroad. He designed and constructed a number of other bridges across the Missouri, and numerous important railway projects from Oregon to Florida. Mr. Corthell's operations in railway and harbor construction are so varied that even to cite a list of them would fill a large number of pages. He has been employed by a half dozen different governments to survey and make plans and specifications for the construction of all sorts of harbor works, and has been honored by a number of colleges for his important contributions and reports not

only upon aqueous construction, but upon rapid transit, and the regulation of street and railway traffic. His reports upon the efficiency of engineering feats in Europe and South America have been especially valuable.

Mr. Corthell is a permanent representative of the United States at the Congress of Navigation in Brussels. Some time ago the Argentine government sent him to the International Navigation Congress at Dusseldorf. In 1904 he was appointed by the Governor of New York as a member of the Advisory Board of Consulting Engineers to enlarge the Erie Canal, but resigned to take charge of vast engineering projects in Brazil, upon which work he is now engaged. Mr. Corthell has handled over a hundred million dollars of constructive work, and his present plans involve an expenditure of over forty millions. He is a member of all of the leading scientific and engineering societies in the world, and many military and patriotic associations,

He was born in Whitman, Massachusetts, in 1840, and attended Brown University until the outbreak of the Civil war, leaving to enlist as a private. He came out at the end of four years and three months' service as captain of a battery. Immediately after the war he re

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