Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 May 1892 — Copper by the Thousand Tons. [ARTICLE]

Copper by the Thousand Tons.

Years ago, when it was known that the supply of copper in the Lake Superior region was very large, and the uses of that metal in the arts were confined to certain well-established limits, no doubt there were people who foresaw a glut o's the copper market, and looked for the time, not far removed, when copper mining would scarcely pay expenses, for want of sufficient demand for the article. But in the period, say twenty years, which has since elapsed, many things have happened, one of which is the invention of the telephone. It is a remarkable device, and one of never-ceasing interest as well as utility; but it would not at first glance appear to have any special relation to the copper-mining industry. One of its recent phases, however, has a very material bearing upon that interest. It is stated that the American Bell Telephone Company has fifty lines of long-distance telephone in process of construction from Chicago to New York, and that each will require two lines of wire, making 100 lines of single wire. The distance from New York to Chicwgo being but a trifle less than 1,000 miles, here is, approximately, a total of 100,000 miles of copper wire. Its weight is 774 pounds to the mile, giving an aggregate of more than 17,000,000 pounds, or over 8,500 tons. This is about 1,500 tons more, it is -said, than the entire production of the Tamarack, one of the leading copper mines of the Lake Superior region, for the year 1890. Twenty years ago, or even ten years ago, the most far-see-ing observer could not have anticipated this demand upon the copperproducing resources of the country. And whether in e.Metrical science or in any other department of human effort, it is just as impossible at this moment to make a forecast of the situation which will exist jn 1900 or 1910 as it was in 1870 or 1880 to predict the advances which have been made between those dates and the present. It is difficult to realize, as regards the progress of invention, that the future is a sealed book precisely as the past has been. But it is a reasonable belief that the wonders of rne future will surpass those of the past; for the work of one decade only broadens the foundation for the next. —Mechanical News.