Mining and Metallurgy - Expo Paris 1867

Here we pass under a sort of tunnel on which rises a monumental organ of the Meiklin-Schutze establishments, and immediately afterwards we find ourselves in the midst of mining and metallurgical equipment, drilling machines, extraction apparatus, those used for the mechanical preparation of ores or for the agglomeration of fuels, tools used in the forges for hammering and rolling: instruments that one would think could only be used by superhuman creatures, by giants the size of those to whom, in the age of innocent anatomy, the fossil bones of elephants were reported.

Immediately behind the Titan locomotive, we have a two hundred horsepower coal extraction machine (shown in the figure): between two vertical cylinders there is a huge drum on which the cable is wound, which, sliding on the pulleys of the extraction cage placed a little further away, brings up from the bottom of the shaft the buckets full of coal. This is the installation of the fourth pit of the Compagnie de Béthune, and we see here a use of the enormous ropes which, at the beginning of this walk, had attracted our attention. On our right is a wooden model of one of the rolling mills used by the forges of the Loire and the Midi: the table is 3,300 metres long; the diameter of the cylinder is 1 metre. Next to it is a section of casing for a forced shaft coming out of the Auberives foundries, and whose size is such that, lying down, it almost reaches the platform. Next to it is a prodigious shear, whose force is used to cut the angles. For a moment the masterpieces of the coachwork rest our eyes; but almost immediately we find ourselves transported to the midst of the machines and appliances of the general mechanics, the steam engines, the gas engines, the hydraulic receivers and the hydraulic elevating machines, those which serve for the manoeuvre of the loads, the counters and the recorders, soon followed by the admirable machine-tools which serve for the work of wood. And by an insensible slope, after having measured with our eyes the most powerful tooling that human industry has achieved, we arrive at the small manual trades which form the last stage of the French section and which we will deal with in the next article before moving on to the foreign sections.

©L'Exposition Universelle de 1867 Illustrée