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THE INTRODUCTION OF CYANIDING IN NEW ZEALAND: A CASE STUDY IN THE ROLE OF TECHNOLOGY IN HISTORY
Abstract
This article explores the factors influencing entrepreneurial decisionmaking about the introduction of new technological processes in the gold mining companies of nineteenth century New Zealand. It attempts to estimate the significance of scientific discoveries to technological advance, and the influence of government, economic circumstances and patent laws. In this way, it seeks to explain the retardation of the introduction of cyaniding as a combination of scientific and expert doubt about the effects of cyanide, the entrepreneurial problem of distinguishing the one young swan among the ducklings, and the pricing policy of the patent owners. It indicates briefly the effects that the introduction of cyaniding had on the structure of the gold mining industry.
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NOTES AND REFERENCES
Arnold Pacey. . 1974. . The Maze of Ingenuity: Ideas and Idealism in the Development of Technology . , London : : Allen Lane. .
Karl Marx. . 1963. . Poverty of Philosophy . , p. 92 New York : : International Publishers. .
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Habakkuk H. J.. 1967. . American and British Technology in the Nineteenth Century . , Cambridge : : Cambridge University Press. .
R. W. Fogel, Railroads and American Economic Growth: Essays in Econometric History, Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1964. The idea was subsequently taken up in a variety of contexts: cf. R.W. Fogel and S.L. Engerman (eds), The Re-interpretation of American Economic History, Harper and Row, New York, 1971; Adler G. Aydelotts and R.W. Fogel (eds), The Dimensions of Quantitative Research in History, Princeton University Press, 1972, and R.W. Fogel and S.L. Engerman, Time on the Cross, Wildwood House, London, 1974.
D.S.L. Cardwell, Technology Science and History, Heinemann, London, 1972, also published as Turning Points in Western Technology, Science History Publishers, New York, 1972; or Samuel Lilly, Men, Machines and History, International Publishers, New York, 1966. A source of earlier works can be obtained from E. S. Ferguson, Bibliography of the History of Technology, Society for the History of Technology, Cambridge, Mass., 1968; K. J. Rider, History of Science and Technology: A Select Bibliography, Library Association, London, 1970.
See W. Paul Strassmann, Risk and Technological Innovation: American Manufacturing Methods during the Nineteenth Century, Cornell, Ithaca, N.Y., 1959.
For a fuller investigation of the philosophical problems see, for example, Reinhard Rürup ‘Historians and modern technology — reflections on the development and current problems of the history of technology’, Technology and Culture, 15, 2, 1974, pp. 161–93; R.A. Buchanan, ‘History of technology and the teaching of history’, History of Technology, 3, 1978, pp. 15–21.
Edwin Layton T.. 1974. . ‘Technology as knowledge’. . Technology and Culture . , Vol. 15((1)): 31––41. .
Simmons J.. 1978. . ‘Technology as history’. . History of Technology . , Vol. 3:: 8
Leo Katzen, Gold and the South African Economy: the influence of the Gold-mining Industry on Business Cycles and Economic Growth in South Africa 1886–1961, A. H. Ballanger, Cape Town/Amsterdam, 1964, p. 6.
New Zealand House of Representatives Journals, Government Printer, Wellington, 1892, Appendix C3, p. 57.
H. A. Gordon, Mining and Engineering and Miners' Guide, Wellington, 1906.
New Zealand House of Representatives Journals, 1885, Appendix H9.
Gordon, op. cit., pp. 484–6.
New Zealand House of Representatives Journals, 1885, Appendix H9; 1886, Appendix C2, p. 28
ibid., 1886, Appendix C4a, pp. 2–3; 1886, Appendix C2, p. 4.
ibid., 1886, Appendix C4a, p. 4.
ibid., 1887, Appendix C5, p. 46.
ibid., 1887, Appendix C5, p. 62. In this the ore was first crushed coarse with rolls, roasted and constantly stirred in a reverberatory furnace with three hearths, salt being added in the lower hearth. The ore was then sifted and either amalgamated in Wheeler pans with mercury, water and steam, or leached with hyposulphide of calcium or sodium, which dissolved the silver. After this the pulp was chlorinated and the gold precipitated.
ibid., 1890, Appendix C3, p. 37.
J. E. Clennell, The Cyanide Handbook, McGraw Hill, New York, 3rd ed., 1914, p. 17.
ibid., p. 27.
For the curriculum of the schools of mines, see the reports appended to the New Zealand House of Representatives Journals, or the advice given to “a junior student of chemistry” in The English Mechanic and World of Science, 36, 1893, PP. 287ff.
R.G.A. Dolby, ‘Debates over the theory of solution: a study of dissent in physical chemistry in the English speaking world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries’, Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences, 7, 1976, pp. 297–303, and Elizabeth Garber, ‘Molecular Science in late nineteenth century Britain’, Historical Studies in Physical Sciences, 9, 1978, pp. 265–97.
New Zealand House of Representatives Journals, 1897, Appendix C4a, p. 1
ibid., 1897, Appendix C11, pp. 1–2.
Reported in The Times, 9 November 1894, pp. 13–14; and in Comptroller-General of Patents (UK), Annual Reports, 9, p. 638.
Clennell, op. cit, p. 24.
C.G.W. Lock, Practical Gold Mining, Span, London, 1904, p. 19.
New Zealand House of Representatives Journals, 1890, Appendix C3?, p. 39.
Clennell, op. cit., p. 35.
Illustration and Diagram of Crown Company Plant in New Zealand House of Representatives Journals, 1892, Appendix C3, p. 65.
Clennell, op. cit., p. 30.
New Zealand House of Representatives Journal, 1892, Appendix C3, p. 44.
ibid., 1891, Appendix C4.
Plan, ibid., 1891, Appendix C4, p. 32.
New Zealand House of Representatives Journal, 1891, Appendix C4, pp. 36–37.
The company records are lodged at the Auckland Institute Museum. Because of the subsequent significance of Waihi in New Zealand political and trade union history, the six month strike from 13 May to 12 November 1912 still has a major symbolic significance even today. See also Philip Rainer, Company Town: an Industrial History of the Waihi Gold Mining Co. Ltd., 1887–1912 (MA thesis, University of Auckland, 1976).
Daily Southern Cross, 19 February 1875, p. 3.
For Russell's career see Russel Stone, Makers of Fortune, Auckland University Press, Wellington, 1973; cf. H. A. Gordon, Handbook to New Zealand Mines, Government Printer, Wellington, 1887.
Gordon's estimate in his report. The prospectus for Russell's new company spoke of “up to 91/2 oz. gold and 54 oz. silver to the ton, worth £50 a ton at existing prices.” This was the yield of one parcel sent to the Bank of England's assayers. Later parcels sent there gave a much lower yield. Even with cyaniding the commercial yield was far lower.
Auckland Museum and Institute of Waihi records, Board minutes.
Gordon's estimate. The machine house was insured for £2,000 and the machines in it for £5,000 plus the pumping gear for the mines etc.
Auckland Museum and Institute, Minute Book of Local Board of Directors, passim.
New Zealand House of Representatives Journal, 1894, Appendix C4, p. 4.
ibid., 1890, Appendix C3, p. 41.
Minute Book of local board, p. 58.
Minute Book of local board, p. 72. In fact, the actual cost was higher, p. 115.
The warden demanded that in return for the number of sluice heads required the company make available to the public ten head of stamps between May and December.
Australian Trading World, 4 April, 1891.
New Zealand House of Representatives Journal, 1891, Appendix C3, p. 41.
Gordon reported this in 1892.
Minute Book of local board, pp. 118, 121.
ibid., p. 123.
ibid., p. 124–7.
Journal of House of Representatives, 1897, Appendix 4A, p. 2.
Minute Book of local board, p. 146.
ibid., p. 149.
ibid., p. 151.
Journal of House of Representatives, 1897, I, Appendix 4A, p. 3.
Minute Book of local board, pp. 156, 158.
Journal of New Zealand House of Representatives, 1893, Appendix C3, pp. 220–1.
ibid., 1897, I, Appendix 4A, p. 3.
ibid., 1892, Appendix C3, pp. 37–8.
ibid., 1893, Appendix C2, p. 5; Appendix C3, p. 27.
The Times, 9 November 1894, pp. 13–14, and in Comptroller-General of Patents (UK), Annual Reports, 11, p. 638.
The British system of patent law had recently been overhauled. Klaus Boehm, The British Patent System, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1967, pp. 26–30. This had been the outcome of decades of controversy and differences of opinion: F. Machlup and E. Penrose, ‘The patent controversy in the nineteenth century’, Journal of Economic History, 10, 1950, pp. 1–29.
The Times, 9 April 1895.
Journal of New Zealand House of Representatives, 1897, I, Appendix 4A, p. 5.
ibid., 1893, Appendix C3, p. 188.
ibid., 1897, I, Appendix 4A.
Katzen, op. cit., p. 10.
The contemporary and subsequent political-historical writing on this is immense; for a bibliography see Rainer, op. cit. The most useful book on the mining itself is J.B. McAva, Gold Mining at Waihi 1878–1982, Waihi Historial Society, Waihi, 1982.
J.H.M. Salmon, A History of Gold Mining in New Zealand, Wellington, 1964.
Peter Richardson and Jean Jacques Van Helsen, The Gold Mining Industry in the Transvaal, pp. 20–2.