Freiberg and the Frontier: Louis Janin, German Engineering, and ‘Civilisation’ in the American West

Summary

Mining companies after the Gold Rush depended heavily on foreign expertise, and yet historians of mining have glorified ‘German engineering’ in America. The application of German technology in America was fraught with difficulties, and most advances were micro- rather than macro-innovations, such as Philip Deidesheimer's famous square-set timbering on the Comstock Lode. The problem began at German mining schools, such as the Freiberg Mining Academy, where Americans like Louis and Henry Janin, while they acquired advanced training and adopted an engineering ethos, struggled to learn about Mexican and American mining. Having complemented their course of study to remedy this deficiency, the brothers returned to the US intending to modernize mining on the frontier. Louis attempted the ‘Freiberg Process’ of amalgamation on the Comstock Lode, but locally developed methods proved more feasible, and the experiment failed. He came to apply his training rather toward the micro-level problem of how to reprocess amalgamation waste heaps.

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Mary Terrall and Kathryn M. Olesko for reading an earlier version of this paper, Elliot West and Fred Quivik for important discussions, and the Huntington Library for its support.

Notes

¹Huntington Library, Janin Family Collection [hereafter ‘JFC’], Box 21, Louis Janin to father, Freiberg, January 11, 1860.

²Huntington Library, Louis Janin Collection [hereafter ‘LJC’], Addenda, Box 1, nr. 64295 [no page numbers]. The raid is also recounted in John Ross Browne, Adventures in the Apache Country: A Tour Through Arizona and Sonora, with Notes on the Silver Regions of Nevada (New York, 1869), 212–17. Louis was the son of Louis Janin Sr. (1803–1874), a lawyer from New Orleans who became involved in the legal battle over ownership of the New Almaden mercury mine in San Jose. He married the daughter of the governor of Mississippi. He sent three sons—Louis, Henry, and Alexis—to Freiberg. A fourth may have fought for the Confederate Army, but the political leanings of the family remain unclear. Louis and Henry did not specify their politics but were focused on the West. See R. Raymond, ‘Biographical Notice of Louis Janin’, Transactions of the American Institute of Mining Engineers, 49 (1914), 831–36.

³L. Hovis and J. Mouat, ‘Miners, Engineers, and the Transformation of Work in the Western Mining Industry, 1880–1930’, Technology and Culture, 37 (1996), 429–56. Monte Calvert, The Mechanical Engineer in America, 1830–1910: Professional Cultures in Conflict (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1967). Alfred D. Chandler Jr, The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993). K.H. Ochs, ‘The Rise of American Mining Engineers: A Case Study of the Colorado School of Mines’, Technology and Culture, 33 (1992), 278–301. E. Layton, ‘Mirror-Image Twins: Science and Technology in Nineteenth Century America’, Technology and Culture, 12 (Oct., 1971), 562–80.

⁴R. Burt, ‘Innovation or Imitation? Technological Dependency in the American Nonferrous Mining Industry’, Technology and Culture, 41 (2000), 321–47.

⁵B.E. Seely, ‘European Contributions to American Engineering Education: Blending Old and New’, Quaderns d'Histoira del'Enginyeria, 3 (1999), 25–50. O. Young, ‘The Spanish Tradition in Gold and Silver Mining’, Arizona and the West, 7 (Winter, 1965), 299–314.

⁶D. Brianta, ‘Education and Training in the Mining Industry, 1750–1860: European Models and the Italian Case’, Annals of Science, 57 (2000), 268.

⁷Technical education in Hochschulen and Realschulen was well developed in Germany by mid century. George S. Emmerson, Engineering Education: A Social History (Newton Abbot, England: David and Charles, 1973). See also Kees Gispen, Old Order, New Profession: Engineers and German Society, 1815–1914 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), Bernd Faulenbach, ‘Preußische Bergassessoren im privaten Ruhrbergbau, 1865–1914’, in Ingenieure in Deutschland, 1770–1990, edited by Peter Lundgreen and Andre Grelon (New York: Campus Verlag, 1994), 189–204, and Eric Dorn Brose, The Politics of Technological Change in Prussia: Out of the Shadow of Antiquity, 1809–1848 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), Chapter Four.

⁸David Kühner, et al., The Herbert Clark Hoover Collection of Mining and Metallurgy (Claremont, CA: Libraries of the Claremont Colleges, 1980). German territories began rapid industrialization in the 1840s. Saxony, home of the Freiberg Academy, was an important territory in the Holy Roman Empire and emerged as a kingdom after Napoleon abolished the Empire in 1806. It lost northern territory to Prussia in the 1815 Congress of Vienna. The remaining territory remained autonomous until Prussian victory in the Austro-Prussian war of 1866, when it merged with Prussia. In 1871 it became part of the German Empire.

⁹Macro-innovations are fundamental design changes or inventions, whereas micro-innovations are improvements to existing designs. Americans excelled in the latter. See Joel Mokyr, Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990). Also Burt, ‘Technological Dependency’, 323–5. On micro- and macro perspectives among historians and the issue of technological determinism, see Thomas J. Misa, ‘Retrieving Sociotechnical Change from Technological Determinism’, edited by Merritt Roe Smith and Leo Marx, Does Technology Drive History? The Dilemma of Technological Determinism (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994), 115–41.

¹⁰John Rowe, The Hard-Rock Men: Cornish Immigrants and the North American Mining Frontier (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1974), 83–7. ‘Freiberg’ courses through Spence's important Mining Engineers and the American West, though not with the critical attention the school deserves. Clark C. Spence, Mining Engineers and the American West: The Lace-Boot Brigade, 1849–1933 (Moscow, ID: University of Idaho Press, 1993). On Freiberg-trained men in Colorado, see R. W. Paul, ‘Colorado as a Pioneer of Science in the Mining West’, The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 47:1 (June, 1960), 43. Other ‘Freiberg men’ appear in Paul's Mining Frontiers of the Far West, 1848–1880 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001). German scholarship originally promoted the stereotype of German engineering in America. A classic statement is Albert Bernhardt Faust, The German Element in the United States, with Special Reference to its Political, Moral, Social, and Educational Influence, 2 vols. (New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1909), II. See also entries in Gerhard K. Friesen, editor, The German Contribution to the Building of the Americas (Hanover, NH; Clark University Press, 1977).

¹¹On engineering and the civilizing mission: Michael Adas, Dominance by Design: Technological Imperatives and America's Civilizing Mission (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006). Michael Adas, Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989). Spence, Mining Engineers, Chapter 11. Antoine Picon, French Architects and Engineers in the Age of Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). J.K. Wilson, ‘Environmental Chauvinism in the East: Forestry as a Civilizing Mission on the Ethnic Frontier, 1871–1914’, Central European History, 41 (2008), 27–70. K.M. Olesko, ‘Geopolitics & Prussian Technical Education in the Late-Eighteenth Century’, Actes D'Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica 2, no. 2 (2009), 11–44.

¹²Burt, ‘Innovation or Imitation?’, 341.

¹³R. H. Limbaugh, ‘Making Old Tools Work Better: Pragmatic Adaptation and Innovation in Gold-Rush Technology’, in A Golden State: Mining and Economic Development in Gold Rush California, edited by James J. Rawls and Richard J. Orsi (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999), 27. Eda Kranakis, Constructing a Bridge: An Exploration of Engineering Culture, Design, and Research in Nineteenth-Century France and America (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1997), especially Chapter Eight. Burt, ‘Innovation or Imitation?’, 339.

¹⁴The chief founder of Columbia, Thomas Egleston, received informal instruction at Freiberg while a student at the École de Mines in Paris. In Frederick Gleason Corning, A Student Reverie: An Album of Saxony Days (New York, 1920).

¹⁵‘In Germany the art of mining seems to have arrived at its climax’. William H. Keating, Considerations Upon the Art of Mining, to which are added Reflections upon its Actual State in Europe (Philadelphia, 1821), 70. His remarks on the Freiberg Academy are found on page 54.

¹⁶ Mining and Scientific Press, 73 (August 1, 1896), 86, quoted in Spence, Mining Engineers, 71.

¹⁷ Engineering and Mining Journal (March 27, 1880), 220.

¹⁸Spence, Mining Engineers, 74. See also Carroll W. Pursell, The Machine in America: A Social History of Technology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 2007), 166–67, and J. A. Church, ‘Mining Schools in the United States’, North American Review (January, 1871), 73. The literature on nativism in Western mining is vast, if not always extended to matters of science and technology. For an overview, see Sucheng Chan, ‘A People of Exceptional Character: Ethnic Diversity, Nativism, and Racism in the California Gold Rush,’ in Rooted in Barbarous Soil: People, Culture, and Community in Gold Rush California, edited by Kevin Starr and Richard J. Orsi (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000), 44–85, and Paul, Mining Frontiers, Chapter 11.

¹⁹‘A Bill to Establish a National School of Mines’, in John Ross Browne, Resources of the Pacific Slope. A Statistical and Descriptive Summary of the Mines and Minerals, Climate, Topography, Agriculture, Commerce, Manufactures, and Miscellaneous Productions, of the States and Territories West of the Rocky Mountains (San Francisco, 1869), 665.

²⁰Browne, Resources, 660.

²¹Browne, Resources, 661.

²²J.H. Bartlett, ‘American Students of Mining in Germany’, Transactions of the American Institute of Mining Engineers, 5 (May 1876 to Feb. 1877), 434.

²³John Hays Hammond, The Autobiography of John Hays Hammond (New York: Farrar and Rinehart Inc., 1935), 63.

²⁴‘Die Achtung vor Deutscher Ausbildung nimmt zu und es werden mehr und mehr junge Leute von hier für eine Reihe von Jahren nach Freiberg geschickt’. Ferdinand Freiherr (Baron) von Richthofen, Die Metallproduction Californiens (Virginia City, 1864), 13. Also, ‘Der technische Leiter müsste direct von Deutschland kommen und die verschiedenen Methoden der Reduktion von Silbererzen durch längere praktische Beschäftigung in dortigen Silberhütten verschiedener Art genau kennen gelernt haben’. Richthofen, Die Metallproduction Californiens, 56.

²⁵Spence, Mining Engineers, 25.

²⁶On the Freiberg Academy see Hans Baumgärtel, Bergbau und Absolutismus: Der sächsische Bergbau in der zweiten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts und Maßnahmen zu seiner Verbesserung nach dem Siebenjährigen Kriege (Leipzig: Deutscher Verlag für Grundstoffindustrie, 1963), Walter Hoffman, Bergakademie Freiberg (Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Wolfgang Weidlich, 1959), and Hanns-Heinz Kasper and Eberhard Wächtler, eds., Geschichte der Bergstadt Freiberg (Weimar: Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1986). Other important government mining academies included Paris, St. Petersburg, Berlin, and Chemnitz in Austria. Freiberg was the model for these other institutions, not all of which boasted such proximity to mines, or enjoyed the same reputation. See Brianta, ‘Education and Training’.

²⁷‘Men already distinguished in science studied the German language, and came from the most distant countries to hear the great oracle of geology’. Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology, 3 vols. (London, 1830), I, 56. Lyell was drawing on Cuvier's ‘Éloge Historique de Werner’, read to the Royal Institute of France in 1818.

²⁸Bartlett, ‘American Students’, 439.

²⁹B. Sinclair, ‘Americans Abroad: Science and Cultural Nationalism in the Early Nineteenth Century’, in The Sciences in the American Context: New Perspectives, edited by Nathan Reingold (Washington, DC: The Smithsonian Institute, 1979), 35–53.

³⁰Church, ‘Mining Schools’, f.70. Bartlett, ‘American Students’, 446.

³¹Corning, A Student Reverie, 25.

³²William Pettee Collection [WPC], Box 2, William Pettee to mother, Freiberg, Nov. 13, 1867.

³³ Festschrift zum hunderjährigen Jubiläum der Königlichen Sächsichen Bergakademie zu Freiberg (Dresden 1866), 92–3.

³⁴B.S. Lyman, ‘The Freiberg School of Mines’, in Mineral Resources of the States and Territories West of the Rocky Mountains, edited by Rossiter W. Raymond (Washington, DC, 1869), 230–35.

³⁵Wilhelm August Lampadius, Anleitung zum Studium des Bergbaues und Hüttenwesens auf der Bergakademie zu Freyberg, für Ausländer (Freiberg, 1820).

³⁹Bartlett, ‘American Students’, 434.

³⁶R.H. Richards, ‘American Mining Schools’, Transactions of the American Institute of Mining Engineers, XV (May 1886 to Feb. 1887), 327.

³⁷Raymond, ‘Biographical Notice’, 832.

³⁸JFC, Box 20, Henry Janin to father, Freiberg, April 4, 1859.

⁴⁰One taler = 72 cents. Church, ‘Mining Schools’, 69–70. Lampadius figured 500–700 taler in 1820.

⁴¹JFC, Box 20, Henry Janin to father, Freiberg, Dec. 18, 1859. US students, ‘probably paid at least one half the fees received by the professors’. Church, ‘Mining Schools’, 70.

⁴²Corning, A Student Reverie, 25.

⁴³JFC, Box 21, Louis Janin to father, Freiberg, Oct. 6, 1858. Janin's figures are corroborated by Church, ‘Mining Schools’, 69–70.

⁴⁴JFC, Box 21, Louis Janin to father, Freiberg, March 21, 1858.

⁴⁵JFC, Box 21, Louis Janin to father, Freiberg, Dec. 5, 1858.

⁴⁶JFC, Box 21, Louis Janin to father, Freiberg, Oct. 6, 1858.

⁴⁷In Bartlett, ‘American Students’, 446.

⁴⁸Raphael Pumpelly, My Reminiscences (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1918), 129.

⁴⁹Corning, A Student Reverie, 25.

⁵⁰Bartlett, ‘American Students’, 436.

⁵¹WPC, Box 2, William Pettee to mother, Freiberg, July 23, 1867.

⁵²JFC, Box 19, Alexis Janin to mother, Freiberg, Dec. 2, 1864. Buest became Oberberghauptmann in 1851. His brother was prime minister of Austria-Hungary.

⁵³Pumpelly, Reminiscences, 135.

⁵⁴JFC, Box 21, Louis Janin to father, Dresden, May 23, 1857. On the revival of dueling among the middle class in Germany, see Ute Frevert, Men of Honor: A Social and Cultural History of the Duel (Oxford: Polity Press, 1995).

⁵⁵JFC, Box 19, Alexis Janin to mother, Freiberg, Oct. 24, 1864.

⁵⁶JFC, Box 19, Alexis Janin to father, Freiberg, May 11, 1866.

⁵⁷JFC, Box 19, Alexis Janin to mother, Freiberg, Feb. 23, 1866.

⁵⁸WPC, Box 2, William Pettee to mother, Freiberg, Oct.8, 1865.

⁵⁹Pumpelly, Reminiscences, 128.

⁶⁰JFC, Box 21, Louis Janin to father, Freiberg, Oct. 6, 1858.

⁶¹Louis Janin Sr. represented the New York-based Quicksilver Mining Company against Barron, Forbes and Co. See Milton Lanyon and Laurence Bulmore, Cinnabar Hills: The Quicksilver Days of New Almaden (Los Gatos, CA: Village Printers, 1967), Milton H. Shutes, Abraham Lincoln and the New Almaden Mine (San Francisco, 1936), and Mary Laura Coomes, ‘From Pooyi to the New Almaden Mercury Mine: Cinnabar, Economics, and Culture in California to 1920’ (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan PhD Dissertation, 1999).

⁶²JFC, Box 20, Henry Janin to father, Dresden Oct 2, 1859. Also Freiberg, Oct. 16, 1859. Also Orleans, Jan 3, 1861.

⁶³LJC, Box 1, Book 1, pp. 44–6.

⁶⁴LJC, Box 1, Book 2 [no page #].

⁶⁵One travel brochure of 1850 described Halsbrücke as the ‘largest amalgamation works in the world’. Erinnerungen an Freiberg's Bergbau: Ein Leitfaden für den Besuch der Gruben und Wäschen, sowie der Hütten, des Amalgamirwerkes und der Extractionsanstalt (Freiberg, 1850), 31. Baron Ignaz von Born of Austria revived a South American process of boiling powdered ore (Cazo or Barba process) in copper kettles. Gellert and Charpentier joined Born and others at Skleno, Slovakia, to learn the new technique, which they developed back at Freiberg. See M. Teich, ‘Born's Amalgamation Process and the International Metallurgic Gathering at Skleno in 1786’, Annals of Science, 32 (1975), 305–40. Barrels in production at Halsbrücke ended in 1856 after changes in costs and quality of ores made smelting more attractive. The models the Janin would have studied involved separate roasting of ores followed by amalgamation in rotating casks with moderate heat. For a technical explanation of amalgamation at Halsbrücke, see John Arthur Phillips, Elements of Metallurgy: A Practical Treatise on the Art of Extracting Metals from their Ores (London, 1887), 694–99.

⁶⁶Volker Depkat, ‘The Birth of Technology from the Spirit of the Lack of Culture. The United States as “Land of Technological Progress” in Germany, 1800–1850’, in Europas Blick auf Amerika vom 18. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert, edited by Michael Wala and Ursula Lehmkuhl (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2000), 23–53.

⁶⁷Magistral was also called green vitriol, iron vitriol, and copperas, and would have differed in composition from region to region. Roasted copper pyrite would have yielded iron and copper sulphate, and together with salt converted silver sulphurets in the ore into silver chlorides, which bonded easily with mercury.

⁶⁸The mercurist ‘heated’ the mixture with magistral (and sunshine), but when the mercury failed to bind and became pastry, he ‘cooled’ the mixture with lime. On the patio process, see Peter Bakewell, editor, Mines of Silver and Gold in the Americas (Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 1997), especially chapters Four and Five. Also his Silver Mining and Society in Colonial Mexico (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), 14–5.

⁶⁹Lampadius was actually testing a new ‘magistral’ (copper rich salt) recommended by Friedrich Sonneschmid, who had visited Mexico. Wilhelm August Lampadius, Neue Erfahrungen im Gebiete der Chemie und Hüttenkunde gesammelt im chemischen Laboratorio zu Freiberg und in den Hüttenwercken und Fabriken Sachsens un den Jahren 1808–1815 (Weimar, 1816), 204–13.

⁷⁰Carl Friedrich Plattner, Vorlesungen über allgemeine Hüttenkunde (Freiberg, 1863), II, 265–70. His successor at Freiberg, Theodor Richter, produced the collection from Plattner's manuscripts.

⁷¹Plattner, Vorlesungen, 312.

⁷²Bruno Kerl, A Practical Treatise on Metallurgy, Crookes and Röhrig, trans. (London, 1868), 318.

⁷³Kerl, Metallurgy, 335–46.

⁷⁴Kerl, Metallurgy, 531.

⁷⁵Bartlett, ‘American Students’, 439.

⁷⁶JFC, Box 20, Henry Janin to father, Freiberg, Dec. 18, 1859.

⁷⁷JFC, Box 21, Louis Janin to father, Freiberg May 8, 1859.

⁷⁸JFC, Box 21, Louis Janin to father, Freiberg, Jan 23, 1859.

⁷⁹JFC, Box 20, Henry Janin to father, Freiberg, Jan 24, 1859. See also Box 20, Henry Janin to father, Dresden Oct 2, 1859.

⁸⁰Henry accidentally confirmed a diamond field without realizing that it had been ‘salted’ or artificially prepared to create an investment bubble. Henry Janin, A Brief Statement of my Part in the Unfortunate Diamond Affair (San Francisco, 1873). Robert Wilson, The Explorer King: Adventure, Science, and the Great Diamond Hoax (New York: Scribner, 2006), Chapter 12.

⁸¹JFC, Box 21, Louis Janin to father, Dresden, July 26, 1857.

⁸²JFC, Box 20, Henry Janin to father, Freiberg Dec 15, 1858.

⁸³JFC, Box 21, Louis Janin to father, Freiberg, Jan 23, 1859. Louis also mentioned Friedrich Wislizenus's Memoir of a Tour to Northern Mexico (1848), and Saint-Clair Duport's On the Production of Precious Metals in Mexico (1843).

⁸⁴JFC, Box 20, Henry Janin to father, Freiberg, Feb. 1, 1859.

⁸⁵JFC, Box 20, Henry Janin to father, Freiberg, July 25 1859. JFC, Box 20, Henry Janin to father, Freiberg, March 20, 1859.

⁸⁶JFC, Box 20, Henry Janin to father, Freiberg, Dec. 18, 1859.

⁸⁷LJC, Box 1, Book 1, 80.

⁸⁸JFC, Box 20, Henry Janin to father, Freiberg, Aug. 25, 1857. Louis's notes on magistral and the patio process appear toward the end of LJC, Box 1, Book 2.

⁸⁹WPC, Box 2, William Pettee to mother, Freiberg, June 6, 1866.

⁹⁰JFC, Box 21, Louis Janin to father, Freiberg, Jan 11, 1860.

⁹¹JFC, Box 20, Henry Janin to father, Freiberg, Jan 24, 1859.

⁹²LJC, Box 1, Book 1, p. 93.

⁹³JFC, Box 21, Louis Janin to father, Freiberg, Jan 23, 1859.

⁹⁴JFC, Box 20, Henry Janin to father, Freiberg, March 20, 1859.

⁹⁵JFC, Box 20, Henry Janin to father, Freiberg, April 4, 1859. Also Freiberg May 10, 1859. Other internationals may have also complemented their studies to prepare for service back home, as did Manuel Da Câmara from Brazil, who had a particular interest in gold. See Silvia Figueirôa and Clarete da Silva, ‘Enlightened Mineralogists: Mining Knowledge in Colonial Brazil, 1750–1825’, Osiris 15 (2001), 181.

⁹⁶JFC, Box 20, Henry Janin to father, Dec. 18, 1859. On the gentlemanly status of geology, see Martin J.S. Rudwick, Bursting the Limits of Time: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 15–37.

⁹⁷Alexander von Humboldt, Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain (London, 1811), 153–60.

⁹⁸Humboldt, Political Essay, 257–72.

⁹⁹Louis added respectfully: ‘He died Friday the 6^th about 3 o'clock in the afternoon, after several days confinement in his bed’. JFC, Box 21, Louis Janin to father, Freiberg May 8, 1859.

¹⁰⁰See especially Scheerer, ‘Das Bergmännische Studium’, in Festschrift, 1866. On Romantic science and Freiberg, see A.M. Ospovat, ‘Romanticism and German Geology: Five Students of Abraham Gottlob Werner’, Eighteenth Century Life, 7 (1981–82), 105–17. Also, W.A. Dym, ‘Scholars and Miners: Dowsing and the Freiberg Mining Academy’, Technology and Culture, 49 (2008), 833–59. On Goethe and Freiberg, Walther Hermann, Goethe and Trebra: Freundschaft und Austausch zwischen Weimar und Freiberg (Berlin, 1955). For a broader discussion, see N. Heringman, ‘The Rock Record and Romantic Narratives of the Earth’, in Romantic Science: The Literary Forms of Natural History, edited by Noah Heringman (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2003), and M. Shortland, ‘Darkness Visible: Underground Culture in the Golden Age of Geology’, History of Science, 32 (1994), 1–61.

¹⁰¹On Cotta, see Otfried Wagenbreth, Bernhard von Cotta: Sein Geologisches und Philosophisches Lebenwerk an Hand ausgewähter Zitate (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1965), and Bergakademie Freiberg, Die Bedeutung Bernhard von Cottas für die geologischen Wissenschaften, in Freiberger Forschungshefte D 137 (Leipzig: VEB Deutscher Verlag für Grundstoffindustrie, 1980).

¹⁰²A. Hague, ‘Biographical Memoir of Samuel Franklin Emmons’, in National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoirs (Washington, DC, 1912), 315.

¹⁰³Fellenberg (1838–1902) became a major explorer and mineralogist, leaving a large mineralogical collection to the Museum of Natural History in Bern, which he also served as president. Foster (1841–1904) worked for the Geological Survey of England before becoming professor of mining at the Royal College of Science, fellow of the Royal Society of Science, and president of the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall.

¹⁰⁴B. von Cotta, ‘Ueber Erzlagerstätten Ungarns und Siebenbürgens’, in Gangstudien: Beiträge zur Kenntnis der Erzgänge, 4 (1) (1862), 19.

¹⁰⁵Cotta, ‘Ueber Erzlagerstätten’, 24.

¹⁰⁶Cotta, ‘Ueber Erzlagerstätten’, 23.

¹⁰⁷The technique involved roasting followed by treatment with hyposulphite of sodium. Phillips, Elements of Metallurgy, 733.

¹⁰⁸LJP, Box 1, Book 3, Freiberg, 1860.

¹⁰⁹LJC, Box 1, Book 4. Louis was quoting from Goethe, Faust, Part I, lines 712–13.

¹¹⁰Elhuyar (1755–1833) also visited Uppsala, Sweden. He would head Mexico's Royal School of Mining. Among his mining and metallurgical experts in the New World were three fellow Freiberg graduates, Friedrich Traugott Sonneschmid, Thaddeus von Nordenflicht, and Luis Lindner. Clement G. Motten, Mexican Silver and the Enlightenment (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1950). Walter Howe, The Mining Guild of New Spain and its Tribunal General, 1770–1821 (London: Harvard University Press, 1949), 307. See also R. M. Buechler, ‘Technical Aid to Upper Peru: The Nordenflicht Expedition’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 5 (May, 1973), and A.P. Whitaker, ‘The Elhuyar Mining Missions and the Enlightenment’, The Hispanic American Historical Review, 31 (Nov, 1951), 557–85. For an overview of German miners in the New World, Thomas Adam, editor, Germany and the Americas: Culture, Politics, and History. A Multidisciplinary Encyclopedia (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2005), s.v. ‘Mining’, and Wilhelm Pferdekamp, Deutsche im Frühen Mexico (Berlin: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1938).

¹¹¹In Motten, Mexican Silver, 54.

¹¹²Young, Western Mining, 78.

¹¹³I. Vassoler, ‘The Mexican Mining Bubble that Burst’, in Alexander von Humboldt: From the Americas to Cosmos, coordinated by Raymond Erickson, Mauricio A. Font and Brian Schwartz (New York: Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere Studies, 2004), 432. The Mexican Civil War began in 1810, and political instability continued after independence from Spain in 1821. See also M. E. Rankine, ‘The Mexican Mining Industry of the Nineteenth Century with Special Reference to Guanajuato’, Bulletin of Latin American Research, 11 (Jan 1992), 29–48.

¹¹⁴Henry Ward, Mexico in 1827, vol. II (London, 1828), 132.

¹¹⁵Ward, Mexico, 361, 530, 531, 533. Eduard Harkort, a Freiberg graduate from Germany working for an English company, had to abandon his metallurgical and surveying work when war broke out between Texas and Mexico. He was reduced to addressing his Freiberg professors from a prison in Veracruz. Harkort to Breithaupt, February 11, 1834. In Mexican Prisons: The Journal of Eduard Harkort, 1832–1834 (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 1986).

¹¹⁶Herbert G. Houze, Samuel Colt: Arms, Art, and Invention (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006).

¹¹⁷Richthofen, Die Metallproduction Californiens, 14 and 52.

¹¹⁸ Report of Frederick Bunckow … to a Committee of the Stockholders of the Sonora Exploring & Mining Co. upon the History Resources, and Prospects of the Company in Arizona (Cincinnati, 1859), 8. Küstel's partner at the assay office in San Francisco was another Freiberg graduate, Ottokar Hofmann.

¹¹⁹ Report of Frederick Brunckow, 17, 19, 22, 26.

¹²⁰ Report of Frederick Brunckow, 23.

¹²¹ Report of Frederick Brunckow, 47.

¹²²Wheeler and Randall, Quartz Operator's Hand Book (San Francisco, 1865).

¹²³LJC, Box 1, Book 1, p. 81.

¹²⁴E.J. Michal, ‘Win Some, Lose Some: The Evolution of Milling Practice on the Comstock Lode’, Nevada Historical Society Quarterly 48:2 (2005), 260–61.

¹²⁵LJC, Box 1, Book 5 [no page numbers]. LJC, Box 1, Book 6, Sept. 25. Janin's dimensions are corroborated in Kerl, Metallurgy, 322.

¹²⁶A.D. Hodges, ‘Amalgamation at the Comstock Lode’, Transactions of the American Institute of Mining Engineers XIX (1890), 202.

¹²⁷Hodges, ‘Amalgamation’, 203. Smith, History of the Comstock, 45.

¹²⁸Huntington Library Rare Books, Nr. 29959, 21.

¹²⁹LJC Addenda, Box 1, nr. 64296. Entries for Jan. 4, Jan. 9, Mar. 27.

¹³⁰LJC Addenda, Box 1, nr. 64295. Louis specified that these were ‘books packed up’.

¹³¹LJC, Addenda, Box 1, nr. 64294. Folded manuscript enclosed in back.

¹³²Huntington Library Rare Books, Nr. 29959, 21.

¹³³LJC, Addenda. Box 1, nr. 64295. The Pumpelly incident is recounted in Pumpelly, Reminiscences, 220.

¹³⁴LJC, Addenda, Box 1, nr. 64296, Wed. 4th.

¹³⁵LJC, Box 1, Book 6 (1864), Sept. 26.

¹³⁶Diane M.T. North, Samuel Peter Heintzelman and the Sonora Exploring and Mining Company (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1980), 41.

¹³⁷On alchemy and the patio process, see Joaquín Pérez Melero, ‘From alchemy to science: The Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment in Spanish American mining and metallurgy’, in The Revolution in Geology from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment: Geological Society of America Memoir 203 (2009), G.D. Rosenberg, editor.

¹³⁸Hodges, ‘Amalgamation’, 208.

¹³⁹Spence, Mining Engineers, 75.

¹⁴⁰Raymond, Mineral Resources, 225. Colorado too was ‘infested with a race of pseudo-scientists, charlatans who bestowed upon themselves the title of “professor”, and talked learned nonsense about patented processes and ingenious gadgets that they had invented to conquer the “refractory ores”’. Paul, ‘Colorado as a Pioneer of Science’, 40.

¹⁴¹Dan de Quille, The Big Bonanza (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1947), 92.

¹⁴²Thomas Egleston, The Metallurgy of Silver, Gold, and Mercury in the United States (New York, 1887), vol. 1, Metallurgy, 384. The same was true in Colorado when mining passed the oxidation zone. J.E. Fell Jr, ‘Nathaniel P. Hill: A Scientist-Entrepreneur in Colorado’, Arizona and the West, 15 (Winter 1973), 324.

¹⁴³Hodges, ‘Amalgamation’, 207.

¹⁴⁴Grant H. Smith, The History of the Comstock Lode, 1850–1997 (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1998), 42.

¹⁴⁵ San Francisco Bulletin, April 4, 1863. In ‘Writings of Almarin B. Paul,’ Huntington Library Rare Books, Nr. 256922, p. 88.

¹⁴⁶‘Almarin B. Paul’ [no date], 143.

¹⁴⁷In Rossiter W. Raymond, Mines, Mills, and Furnaces of the Pacific States and Territories (New York, 1871), 412. Phillips and Eissler observed this trend a decade later. Phillips, Elements of Metallurgy, 712; Manuel Eissler, The Metallurgy of Silver: A Practical Treatise on the Amalgamation, Roasting, and Lixiviation of Silver Ores (London, 1889), 32.

¹⁴⁸‘Almarin B. Paul [no date], 88.

¹⁴⁹‘Almarin B. Paul’ [no date], 142.

¹⁵⁰Egleston, Metallurgy, 348.

¹⁵¹Henry F. Collins, The Metallurgy of Lead and Silver (London, 1900), 118.

¹⁵²Phillips, Elements of Metallurgy, 719. Charles Stetefeldt, a graduate of the Clausthal School of Mines, had established an assay office and consulting firm in Austin, Nevada, with the Freiberg graduate, John Boalt. Eugene J. Michal, ‘Charles A. Stetefeldt: Central Nevada's Pioneer Silver Metallurgist,’ Nevada Historical Society Quarterly 48 (2) (2005), 289–311.

¹⁵³Between 1859 and 1880 the total amount of silver lost in tailings on the Comstock was around 70–75 000 000 dollars. Total silver output was some 300 000 000 dollars. Loss in quicksilver averaged one pound per ton of ore. Smith, Comstock Lode, 256–57.

¹⁵⁴De Quille, Big Bonanza, 94.

¹⁵⁵Hodges, ‘Amalgamation’, 211.

¹⁵⁶Friedrich Sonneschmid, Tratado de Amalgamación de Nueva España (Mexico City, 1805).

¹⁵⁷Arnold Hague, ‘The Chemistry of the Washoe Process’, in Clarence King et al., United States Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel (Washington, 1870).

¹⁵⁸It was the ‘chemical knowledge of his assistants’ that made George Langtry's tailings-mill the most successful on the Comstock. Hodges, ‘Amalgamation’, 217. The study of the chemistry of amalgamation continued through the nineteenth century until even Hague's research had become outdated. See H.F. Collins, ‘On the Chemical Reactions Involved in the Amalgamation of Silver Ores,’ AIME VII (1899), 229–35.

¹⁵⁹Misa, ‘Retrieving Sociotechnical Change’, 138.