The Edison Ore-Milling Company was a venture by

Thomas Edison Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventi ...

that began in 1881. Edison introduced some significant technological developments to the

iron ore Iron ores are rocks and minerals from which metallic iron can be economically extracted. The ores are usually rich in iron oxides and vary in color from dark grey, bright yellow, or deep purple to rusty red. The iron is usually found in the ...

milling industry but the company ultimately proved to be unprofitable. Towards the end of the company's life, Edison realized the potential application of his technologies to the

cement A cement is a binder, a chemical substance used for construction that sets, hardens, and adheres to other materials to bind them together. Cement is seldom used on its own, but rather to bind sand and gravel (aggregate) together. Cement mixe ...

industry and formed the Edison Portland Cement Company in 1899.

History

Beginnings

Thomas Edison cabinet card by Victor Daireaux, c1880s

Edison had recognized the scarcity of iron ore in the 1870s,Woodside, Martin. ''Thomas A. Edison: The Man Who Lit Up the World''. Sterling Publishing Company, Inc., 2007. pp. 73–74. particularly in the east of the United States. His developments in the field of

electricity Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter that has a property of electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as describe ...

meant that he had sufficient finances to invest in other projects. Discovering that beach

sand Sand is a granular material composed of finely divided mineral particles. Sand has various compositions but is defined by its grain size. Sand grains are smaller than gravel and coarser than silt. Sand can also refer to a textural class ...

contained relatively high deposits of

iron Iron () is a chemical element with symbol Fe (from la, ferrum) and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 of the periodic table. It is, by mass, the most common element on Earth, right in ...

, he decided to form the Edison Ore-Milling Company in 1881.The Life of Thomas A. Edison

American Memory American Memory is an internet-based archive for public domain image resources, as well as audio, video, and archived Web content. Published by the Library of Congress, the archive launched on October 13, 1994, after $13 million was raised in ...

. Accessed September 24, 2011. He patented a method of extracting the metal using a large

electromagnet An electromagnet is a type of magnet in which the magnetic field is produced by an electric current. Electromagnets usually consist of wire wound into a coil. A current through the wire creates a magnetic field which is concentrated in ...

after developing the process in an addition to his laboratory. The remaining deposits of iron in the eastern side of the United States were of poor quality, and the difficulty in separating it from the rock and other debris made it unprofitable. Edison believed that his method was a cheaper alternative, allowing him to keep costs down.Edison and Ore Refining

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operati ...

Global History Network. August 3, 2009. Accessed September 24, 2011. William Kennedy Dickson had been put in charge of much of the laboratory and further refined the techniques along with mining expert

John Birkinbine John Birkinbine (November 16, 1844 – May 14, 1915) was an American mining engineer who worked alongside Thomas Edison during 1881 at the Edison Ore-Milling Company. Early life Birkinbine was born November 16, 1844 in Reading, Pennsylvania ...

. However, Edison's iron was competing with the rich iron ore of the

Iron Range The term Iron Range refers collectively or individually to a number of elongated iron-ore mining districts around Lake Superior in the United States and Canada. Much of the ore-bearing region lies alongside the range of granite hills formed by ...

and sales were not sufficient to bring in a profit and the operation was closed down after just a few years. Edison operated an iron mine in the Franklin-Sterling Hill Mining District near Ogdensburg, New Jersey under the New Jersey and Pennsylvania Concentrating Co. The Edison mine exploited a large low-grade magnetite deposit which had been mined since the 1770s, which Edison and his engineers ground and concentrated.

Refocusing

After a short time away from the industry, Edison decided to return, adapting his methods to crush rocks brought up directly from a mine. He opened a plant in

Bechtelsville Bechtelsville is a borough in Berks County, Pennsylvania. The population was 942 at the 2010 census. Geography Bechtelsville is located at (40.370078, -75.628590). According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the borough has a total area of , all lan ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

near to existing iron mines as a trial before building one of the world's largest ore-crushing mills in Ogdensburg,

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delawa ...

. Completed in 1889, the factory contained three giant electromagnets and was intended to process up to 1200 tons of iron ore every day. Technical difficulties repeatedly thwarted production. Edison formed the Edison General Electric Company in 1890 but it only lasted two years, merging in 1892 with the Thomson-Houston Electric Company to form the

General Electric Company The General Electric Company (GEC) was a major British industrial conglomerate involved in consumer and defence electronics, communications, and engineering. The company was founded in 1886, was Britain's largest private employer with over 250 ...

. He redirected his interest back to iron ore, having high hopes for what he could achieve: "I'm going to do something now so different and so much bigger than anything I've ever done before people will forget that my name ever was connected with anything electrical." That year, he closed the Ogdensburg plant for upgrades, using the sale of stocks in General Electric to install new equipment that would be able to output even more iron ore. When it reopened, the earlier problems persisted and Edison once again had difficulties finding customers.

Sale and a change of industry

Eventually, Edison realized that the company was a failure, shutting it down in 1899. Edison commented about the financial losses, "it's all gone, but we had a hell of a good time spending it." The manufacturing process produced a large quantity of waste sand, which the company sold on to cement manufacturers. The properties of the sand were particularly suitable for cement, leading to a harder, more durable product.Cement
''The Edison Papers''. March 31, 2010. Accessed September 24, 2011. Selling off the ore-crushing technology to mine owners, Edison decided to switch to the cement business, reusing some of the technology he had developed for ore-milling.

References

{{Thomas Edison Thomas Edison Metal companies of the United States Energy companies established in 1881 Defunct mining companies of the United States American companies disestablished in 1899 American companies established in 1881

History

Beginnings

Refocusing

Sale and a change of industry

See also

References