Dear All,
Some info. I found recently that I thought some might find interesting. I
have 'edited' it to read clearly. Hope you might find it as interesting as I
have.
Regards, Bernard
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Calamine mines were exploited as a national asset by the French Republic; in
1805, Emperor Napoléon I created a 8,200 ha concession around the Vieille
Montagne des calamines du ci-devant Limbourg. The chemist Dony, a former Canon
of the St. Peter's Chapter in Liège was awarded the concession. Dony invented
a zinc reduction oven known in the industrial world as the "Belgian oven" or
the "Liège oven". In 1813, Dony ceded the concession to the banker Mosselman,
who founded in 1837 - with his family and the Bank of Belgium - the S.A. des
Mines et Fonderies de Zinc de la Vieille Montagne. The Altenberg-Vieille
Montagne mine was declared exhausted in 1884. The mines production between 1553
and 1787 was evaluated to 184,000 tons (raw), 1,255,000 tons of raw material
was extracted from 1837 to 1884. The Schmalgraf mine produced 645,797 tons
(raw) from 1869 to 1933, yielding 337,806 tons of concentrated product. The
mine, although not exhausted, was abandoned in 1933 for economic reasons. Before
1805 and Dony's invention, calamine was specifically used for the
fabrication of brass and sold to the copperware manufacturers (dinandiers) established
in the valley of Moselle in Bouvignies.
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