Industrial Basis of Stratigraphical Geology: ABSTRACT

Abstract

An unprecedented need for a new source of mechanical power in 18th century England, capable of functioning at rates beyond horse-power capacity, was met by coal-fuelled atmospheric engines. They propelled country into an industrial revolution. Economic force-exerted by big population changes greatly altered husbandry, industry, and transportation. Acts of Parliament relating to surveying and draining of lands, mines, and construction of roads and canals multiplied six-fold in second half of century. A land drainer and mineral surveyor, in course of canal-building in east Somersetshire coal-field, discovered and then exploited stratigraphical principle of natural order and regularity in fossil occurrence--each Class assigned to its peculiar Stratum (William Smith, 1796). He had employed prime stratigraphical principle of order and regularity among strata (drawing on colliers' lore and probably a published record), during underground surveys of mines (1791-93). Seventy-two years earlier a wide-ranging account of same coal-field had illustrated a definitive succession, strike, dip, subcrop, outcrop, concealed faulting and unconformity (John Strachey, 1719), and established by direct measurement underground that the Strata lye shelving and regular, and ob erve a regular course. It codified colliers' tradition. A century later this knowledge, unchanged in principle but enlarged in scope, achieved generality in academic realm. End_of_Article - Last_Page 1879------------