Rio Tinto | Minerals and Metals for the world

Earth's secrets unlocked
In March, Chris Morrissey traced the early history that laid the foundations of the science of geology. Now he looks at the events in the twentieth century that helped transform a fledgling science into a giant industry at the heart of global prosperity.

When would-be millionaires stampeded to South Africa after the discovery of the Witwatersrand goldfield in 1886, many must have had in their knapsacks a little volume published the year before entitled The Prospector's Handbook. It gives a fascinating glimpse of what was known about mineral deposits at that time, and of the methods prospectors were using to find them. But there is barely a hint of the ideas and techniques that twentieth century prospectors came to rely upon.

It was a world where electric lights were a novelty and transport by road depended mainly on horses. World copper consumption was still reckoned in hundreds of thousands of tons a year. Zinc and aluminium were minor metals by today's standards. Gold was no more valuable than it had been two centuries earlier. But the winds of change were blowing with hurricane force. Edison and Westinghouse were turning electricity generation and transmission into big business, with a snowball effect on the demand for metals.

World copper demand topped a million tonnes early in the twentieth century, doubled by the late 1930s, and reached five million tonnes in 1966. Aluminium was on the road to mass consumption after the invention of an electrochemical production process in 1886. Electrolytic galvanizing of iron greatly increased the demand for zinc. Tungsten became important, to make filaments for light bulbs.



Earth's secrets unlocked In March, Chris Morrissey traced the early history that laid the foundations of the science of geology. Now he looks at the events in the twentieth century that helped transform a fledgling science into a giant industry at the heart of global prosperity. When would-be millionaires stampeded to South Africa after the discovery of the Witwatersrand goldfield in 1886, many must have had in their knapsacks a little volume published the year before entitled The Prospector's Handbook. It gives a fascinating glimpse of what was known about mineral deposits at that time, and of the methods prospectors were using to find them. But there is barely a hint of the ideas and techniques that twentieth century prospectors came to rely upon. It was a world where electric lights were a novelty and transport by road depended mainly on horses. World copper consumption was still reckoned in hundreds of thousands of tons a year. Zinc and aluminium were minor metals by today's standards. Gold was no more valuable than it had been two centuries earlier. But the winds of change were blowing with hurricane force. Edison and Westinghouse were turning electricity generation and transmission into big business, with a snowball effect on the demand for metals. World copper demand topped a million tonnes early in the twentieth century, doubled by the late 1930s, and reached five million tonnes in 1966. Aluminium was on the road to mass consumption after the invention of an electrochemical production process in 1886. Electrolytic galvanizing of iron greatly increased the demand for zinc. Tungsten became important, to make filaments for light bulbs.
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