THE ELMORE MYSTERY / The inventive Elmore family and their role in the
development of Flotation Process for Mineral Concentration by Peter R
Jenkins 2001, 201 pp, 77 illus. SB £24.50 post free in the UK from the
publisher, Dragonwheel Books, Sandcott, Rectory Lane, Pulborough, West
Sussex, RH20 2AD.
From Glasdir Copper Mine in mid Wales to the Broken Hill Mine in
Australia this is a fascinating account of intrigue and invention. Of
court cases won and lost and one case going as far as the House of Lords.
This book is based on Peter Jenkins’s postgraduate research at Bath
University. His investigations into the flotation processes tell us
something about Herbert Hoover, before he was president of the USA, but
when he went as a financier and mining engineer to Australia. There he
formed the Zinc Corporation to extract zinc from the mine waste at Broken
Hill. Technical problems led to the building of the most important Elmore
vacuum plant, which saved the Corporation from financial ruin and played a
vital part in supplying Britain with zinc during WW2.
The Elmores had a talent for innovation, and for promoting businesses to
market them. They had been largely responsible for devising a system for
making copper tubes by electrolytic deposit. They invented the Elmore
dynamo with its low voltage and high current, it was just the job for
electrolysis. When the family bought the Glasdir Mine, Frank Elmore found a
way of using oil to collect mineral particles from the crushed rock. It had
been tried unsuccessfully by previous owners, but it was Elmore who
developed a process that was practical to utilise on an industrial scale.
The book is concluded with a catalogue and description of the patents
filed by William, Frank and Stanley Elmore between 1879 and 1945 in the
fields of electometallurgy and mining, with such other curiosities as a
meter for recording passenger traffic in tramcars and a primitive linear
induction motor.
As always the Biography make interesting reading from the Public Record
Office at Kew to the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library in the USA. An
essential reference work.
TO
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