Mr. Taconite Edward W. Davis and the Promotion of Low-Grade Iron Ore, 1913-1955

摘要

The development of low-grade iron ore mining and Edward Davis's promotion of it advances historians' understanding of modern mass-removal mining and ore milling, the steel industry, and public engineering in the twentieth century in several important ways. Within the broader history of mining technology and business practices, the history of low-grade iron ore reveals important continuities between iron ore and other mass-removal mining and milling technologies that have been little researched by historians. In his work with low-grade iron ore, Davis first followed the lead of other nonselective mining and milling technologies existing at the turn of the twentieth century. Taconite began as one variant of the low-grade ore bonanza that followed successful commercial implementation of flotation and other nonselective ore-milling techniques. These successes, such as porphyry copper mines, had previously drawn on open-pit mining technologies first developed in the Mesabi Iron Range.