MINING LORE Thomas Edison: The unlucky miner
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Courtesy of The Henry Ford
By Tijana Mitrovic
hen Thomas Alva However, Edison was not Edison began his ready to give up on mining just career in 1863, one yet. After visiting the of the sole sources of electricPanAmerican Exhibition world ity was rudimental, low-voltfair in Buffalo, New York, in age batteries. Over his life, 1901, Edison travelled north to Edison built a world-class the small town of Sudbury, industrial research laboratory, Ontario. He began to survey held 1,093 patents, invented the area for nickel and cobalt the phonograph among many deposits using the magnetic other devices and, perhaps dip needle and found a promismost importantly, invented ing nickel deposit in the Falcondirect current electricity. In bridge area. addition to his famous invenIn 1902, Edison made his tions, he also played a role in first of several attempts to sink the histories of two mines, one a shaft in Sudbury, however he of which would become a sigstruggled against a layer of nificant part of Canada’s minquicksand over the deposit. He ing industry through the 20th eventually gave up and left Century. Sudbury in 1903, abandoning In the late 1880s, Edison his claims. became increasingly interIn 1911, Edison’s claims ested in developing a magnetic reverted back to Crown land. ore-separator. The price of Four years later, E. J. Longyear iron ore had risen significantly acquired the claims and the in the 1880s, and he realized Longyear Diamond Drilling that a large portion of the cost company located a nickel-copwas the shipping of the prodper deposit and successfully uct from faraway mines to the drilled through the glacial eastern United States, where it Thomas Edison, 1895, photographed outside his iron mine in Ogden, New sand, drilling 5.1 million tonnes was then milled and sold to Jersey. across 2,100 metres without industrial consumers. Edison encountering any of the issues believed that if he could use a separator to extract iron from low- Edison had experienced. According to a 1989 CIM presentation value, low-grade ores at local mines, he could eliminate these by Gerald Crawford, Edison had stopped his shaft-sinking only large shipping costs, sell it to customers at a significantly lower 4.5 metres above the ore body. cost and make a fortune. In 1928, the Falconbridge claims once again changed hands as Edison had already created the Edison Ore-Milling Company Thayer Lindsley purchased them for $2.5 million. Soon after in 1880 with the help of several investors. He then purchased and Lindsley incorporated Falconbridge Nickel Mines from two existacquired the rights to 145 old mines in the eastern U.S. and built ing companies and established the company town of Falcona pilot plant at the Ogden mine in New Jersey. He told his bridge. The new company successfully sunk its Number One investors that he would make Ogden the “Yosemite of the East.” mine shaft in October 1929, only 100 feet from where Edison had In 1889 he hired hundreds of carpenters and labourers to tried sinking his shaft. Five years later, the company was operatbegin constructing the first separator and mill. Edison began ing a smelter and mill, had built a second smokestack and was testing the process in the fall of 1891, but a string of operational about to sink its Number Five mine shaft, which would become issues such as the steel conveyor system constantly jamming Falconbridge’s major mine. and the briquette oven being inefficient meant that production Though he himself did not succeed at mining, Thomas Ediwas on and off for several years. son laid the groundwork for the claims that would become the In the spring of 1899 the Ogden mill opened once again and bedrock of a major Sudbury mining operation for the greater began production, and if not for the company’s debts and inter- part of a century. Today, Edison’s role in the history of Falconest obligations, the company would have finally been making a bridge and Sudbury is in part remembered through Falconprofit. However, it was too late: the mill closed that fall and the bridge’s former head office for Sudbury operations, the mine the following year, as Edison liquidated his holdings in Edison Building, which is now an archive for the city of the company. Greater Sudbury. CIM 58 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 15, No. 7