[HN Gopher] The Scranton Iron Furnaces
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The Scranton Iron Furnaces
Author : PaulHoule
Score : 80 points
Date : 2021-11-22 16:03 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (abandonedonline.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (abandonedonline.net)
| exhilaration wrote:
| If you're in this region, a visit to Bethlehem Steel is worth a
| detour: https://www.steelstacks.org/about/what-is-steelstacks/
|
| Much of the steel for the Golden Gate Bridge came from here.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Yesterday I went to Scranton for a comic book convention and saw
| something remarkable next door and found it was this.
| monocasa wrote:
| My dyslexic ass read this as scantron.
|
| I would absolutely refer to 7th grade as a 'scantron iron
| furnace'.
| akamia wrote:
| That's funny. I read it that way too.
| f00zz wrote:
| > The iron ore reserves near Scranton began to be depleted by the
| end of the 19th century.
|
| Something mentioned in the book "The Toaster Project" (where a
| guy tries to build an electric toaster from scratch) is that
| high-grade ore basically doesn't exist any more, and you now need
| to process a ton of ore to extract a few kilograms of metal.
|
| (Just something to keep in mind if you ever find yourself in a
| position of having to rebuild civilization after being trapped in
| stone for 5,000 years.)
| philipkglass wrote:
| Was that book perhaps referring to copper ore? Even low grade
| iron ores like taconite contain a double digit percentage of
| iron:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taconite
| Athas wrote:
| Would it be viable to mine the remnants of civilization? Would
| a garbage dump or the ruins of a 20th century skyscraper be a
| viable source of iron?
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| There would be plenty of metal to work with, but sources of
| heat hotter or denser than charcoal will make working the
| metal difficult.
| debacle wrote:
| All over your town, drivers work day in and day out
| harvesting scrap metal on garbage pickup days.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Precisely.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I would start digging where there had been a scrapyard or a
| garbage dump or landfill.
| bostonsre wrote:
| I grew up near scranton and never heard of these before. Was an
| interesting read.
| icanhasfay wrote:
| Likewise, I must have driven past them a few dozen times
| without even knowing!
| AdamTReineke wrote:
| I was in Scranton for a wedding earlier this year and along with
| visiting the Iron Furnaces, we also stopped by the Anthracite
| Heritage Museum [0] because we were looking for something else to
| do on a lazy Friday. It was interesting to learn a bunch about
| historic coal mining practices and people but the real surprise
| was about halfway through the museum the topic changed to
| textiles -- including some massive Jacquard looms and reels of
| punch cards. [1] I don't have my own photos handy, but this photo
| a loom from the museum with the "tape" of punch cards hiding
| behind the threads in the top right of the photo.
|
| [0] http://www.anthracitemuseum.org/explore/anthracite-museum/
|
| [1] https://uncoveringpa.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2017/04/Anthraci...
| derekjdanserl wrote:
| From a report on the cultures and politics around the
| Anthracite Coal Mines at the turn of the 19th century, which is
| linked below and is probably the most fascinating piece of
| journalism I have ever read:
|
| > _Why the Mills Have Come to the Coal Regions_
|
| _The factory inspector will tell you, "The mills locate in
| Anthracite because they all employ girls, and girl labor is
| cheaper here than anywhere else." A glance at a "textile" map
| of Pennsylvania will show that wherever there are miners, there
| cluster mills that employ "cheap girl labor."_
|
| _Besides silk and hosiery a local feminine industry is the
| manufacture of the fuses or "squibs" which are used in coal
| blasting. The statistics of the nine counties of Anthracite
| count up 11,216 "females" employed in them, 2,403 between 12
| and 16 years of age._
|
| _The perjury certificate prevails for the girls, as well as
| the boys, and I estimate that 90 percent of the 11,216 females
| are girls who have not yet reached womanhood. They work ten
| hours a day, and the majority stand all of that time, having a
| chance to sit only in the noon hour. This brings on a
| characteristic lameness in the girls during their first year at
| the mill. The report of the Secretary of Internal Affairs of
| the State places the "average daily wage of children between
| the ages of 13 and 16" employed in the manufacturing of
| underwear at 47 cents, in hosiery mills at 46 cents._
|
| https://wynninghistory.com/2021/03/27/children-of-the-coal-s...
| 123jay7 wrote:
| The office
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(page generated 2021-11-22 23:00 UTC)