The Machine under the Garden: Rock Drills Arrive at the Lake Superior Copper Mines, 1868-1883

Abstract

In the late 1860s, when the copper mines of Upper Michigan purchased their first power rock drills from the Burleigh Rock Drill Company of Fitchburg, Massachusetts, they were on the receiving end of innovation. The manufacturer put the miner's hands a machine that will drill 2 in. or 3 in. holes in diameter, from 40 to 60 ft. in the shift, but the mining companies then had to have to handle that power to the best advantage.' They had to test and evaluate the machine's technical and economic performance and then, if the drills passed inspection, introduce them into general use. The copper mines along the Keweenaw Peninsula that turned to the Burleigh machine sought to mechanize their most basic underground operation: the drilling of shot holes for blasting rock. The companies had already had brains enough to mechanize many of their operations, starting as early as 1845, when the first stamp mill was built in this remote and new mining district.2 Steam hoists and pumps raised rock and water, and steam-powered man-engines at several mines raised and lowered men. Some companies had already turned from calcining and sledging to mechanical jaw crushers on the surface for breaking their rock, and all the major producers ran mills filled with stamping and washing machinery that liberated and con-