Word: borax
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Even discounting high-energy fuels, borax production is already based solidly on the requirements of more than 100 industries, ranging from glass to pesticides, fertilizers to soaps. And further uses for boron are being found every day. Standard Oil Co. (Ohio) has developed a boron additive for gasoline to provide better economy and lower engine maintenance, is marketing it through Richfield Oil Corp. and Sunray Oil Corp. Though boron for gasoline this year would account for only $500,000 of all borax sales, U.S. Borax hopes to sell the boron additive directly to dealers, swell boron gas into a healthy...
Death Valley Days. U.S. Borax is only a corporate infant-formed last year by the merger of oldtimers Pacific Coast Borax Co. and U.S. Potash Co. But it has close to a natural monopoly, holds 63% of the free world's deposits, including the only big deposit of sodium borate ore (at Boron), the cheapest and easiest type of the mineral to mine and process. The company's ancestry is the story of borax mining in the U.S. The discovery of borax in a California hot spring in 1856 set off feverish prospecting and mining that eventually made...
Smith began marketing borax in the East with the bland promise that "a thimbleful of borax" kept cream sweet, a borax shampoo cured "nervous headache...
Coleman acquired a deposit in California's Death Valley. In 120° heat he began mining borax in the valley 280 ft. below sea level. To transport the ore over jagged peaks and through the desert to Mojave, Calif., he formed the famed 20-mule team (actually 18 mules and two horses), was soon hauling out 2,500,000 tons of ore annually...
...Broke. Poor financing did what the elements could not, and by 1888 Coleman was bankrupt. Borax Smith took over Coleman's mining properties, consolidated all his mines into the Pacific Coast Borax Co. and, to boost European sales, merged with a British chemical company headed by James Gerstley, father of present U.S. Borax President Gerstley. But Smith also overextended himself, also went broke. To pay creditors, he was forced to sell out his stock to Gerstley and other Britons with holdings in the new company, which eventually became known as Borax (Holdings) Ltd. Domination of U.S. borax mining passed...