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Ancillary Industries  and techniques, specialized labor, and economies of scale to effectively mine and mill low-grade ore deposits.These are essentially twentieth-century characteristics , although part of the foundations of modern mining was laid as early as the s in California. The first gold seekers at Sutter’s mill used ancient tools and techniques, but technology made rapid advances in the early s as successive waves of placer miners began to explore the deeper gravels and the lower-grade deposits left behind earlier in the mad dash for nuggets. Lode mining after the s also required increasingly sophisticated tools and techniques. The result was a rising demand for bigger and better mining machinery—hydraulic monitors, iron pipe, amalgamation pans, camshafts and cast-iron mortars for stamp mills, and thousands of specialized hand tools and replacement parts. Eastern and European suppliers for a time tried to meet this demand, but the products were extraordinarily expensive and often unworkable or at least unadaptable to particular needs. Out of this need arose regional equipment manufacturers and a skilled labor pool of draftsmen, machinists, and millwrights familiar with regional conditions. On the West Coast the mining equipment industry gained its first and most important foothold in San Francisco. Beginning with a single foundry in , within a decade the city’s industrial district south of Market Street had sprouted fourteen machine shops and foundries. During the Comstock era the industry mushroomed both in size and in sophistication, for Comstock ores required much more complex mining and milling machinery than the relatively simple equipment used in California gold mines and mills. Not until after the Comstock faded and the expanding transcontinental rail system lowered freight rates for eastern competitors did San Francisco’s mining equipment and supply business begin to diminish.74 While most of the major equipment needs were supplied by San Francisco shops, in both the regional trade centers and the local mining camps an assorted collection of assayers, mechanics, millwrights, blacksmiths, surveyors , and consultants could be found to supply the regional mining industry with specialized services not provided by the mining companies themselves. William A. Hallidie, for example, was a blacksmith in Calaveras and other Mother Lode counties before opening a machine shop in San Francisco. He gained international recognition for his innovative hoisting and surface tramming equipment, including the flat wire rope and the famed cable car.75 Hallidie was a practical engineer, not a school-taught specialist, but the lack of formal training was not a serious handicap in the early years of California mining. Most technical specialists in California before the s learned their profession through practical experience and applied research. Typical  Calaveras Gold was the local inventorat Mokelumne Hill,William Higley,who in  built a homemade pump for lifting water thirty feet above a flume, using two waterwheels each twenty feet in diameter placed so that the water turned both wheels. The mining industry at first welcomed—indeed, demanded—engineers trained in the field, not in the classroom. Many early lode mining ventures failed because of managerial incompetence or errors of judgment, but often those who took the blame were professional engineers. To the mining public in this era, experience counted more than background, education, or social status. College-trained engineers, fresh out of school, were thought impractical , too filled with book learning and lofty theories to have anycommon sense. American nationalism and resentment had a lot to do with this attitude , for westerners retained a lingering suspicion of European-trained professionals . European engineers and metallurgists had played prominent roles in several early western hardrock mining and milling ventures,often with very poor results. Others had been openly critical of American mining methods and technology, arrogantly rejecting American advice, only to be upstaged in the s and s by pragmatic Americans who adapted European technology to meet American needs.76 This popular emphasis on proven ability rather than book learning helps explain the success of Thomas Fullen, another practical engineer with Calaveras experience. Born near Boston in , he came west with his family in  and learned the machinist trade as an apprentice under S. N. Knight, founder of the Sutter Creek Iron Works, more familiarly known today as the Knight Foundry. After working as machinist and master mechanic for several regional mines, he came to Angels Camp in the mid-s, taking a job at the Angels mine. D. C. Demarest, son of the proprietor of the Altaville Iron Works and a trained engineer, met him there...

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