Word: copper
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...happily did Anaconda appear to be sitting on the top of the copper heap that few observers were conscious, last week, of Anaconda's troubles. But Chairman of the Board John D. Ryan and President Cornelius F. Kelly knew that, prosperity or no prosperity, two thorns remained in the side of Anaconda to irritate, exasperate. One thorn was George Campbell Carson. The other was William A. Clark...
Thorn Carson. Twenty-two years ago, copper smelting furnaces were loaded from the top and by hand. Each furnace, filled to capacity, held only 240 tons. These facts, known to all miners, were particularly familiar to a vagabond prospector, George Carson, called the "Desert Rat." For 23 years, he had wandered from mine to mine, pursuing an idea. The idea was a smelter which men could load from the side, which might hold twice or three times as much ore as the old top-charging furnace...
...while working as a chemist in Denver, the Desert Rat captured his idea. He applied for a patent for a side-charging, reverberating furnace. That the patent was delayed did not prevent his peddling the idea to any and all engineers. He showed drawings, explained results. Copper companies, indifferent, rejected both...
...granted the Carson patents. But the Desert Rat, discouraged, had little hope of selling them to the big companies. One night in 1915, he sat in a Manhattan auditorium, listening to the papers read to the American Society of Mining Engineers. One speaker started to explain a new copper reduction process, already in operation in the West. The Desert Rat rose in his seat eyes blazing. He was listening to a description of his own furnace...
...mighty Anaconda itself which carried the Carson case, last August, to the U. S. Supreme Court. Chief Counsel Charles Evans Hughes argued earnestly that side-charging furnaces had been used before the Desert Rat won his patents. Dubious, the Magna Copper Co. of Ari zona did not wait for the decision, settled last fortnight with Carson's backers for $75,000 and an arrangement for future use of the patents. And last week, the Supreme Court briefly denied Anaconda's petition. Holding the battle at length won. the Carson Investment Co. announced that only the labor of accounting...