Seeing Underground: Maps, Models, and Mining Engineering in America (Mining and Society Series) - Softcover

Nystrom, Eric C.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0874170079 ISBN 13: 9780874170078

Publisher: University of Nevada Press, 2016

Synopsis

The digging of mineral wealth from the ground dates to prehistoric times, and Europeans pursued mining in the Americas from the earliest colonial days. Prior to the Civil War, very little mining went deep enough to require maps. However, the major finds of the mid-nineteenth century, such as the Comstock Lode, were vastly larger and deeper than any previous finds in America. Nystrom argues that, as industrial mining came of age in the United States, the development of maps and models gave power to a new visual culture. These maps and models became necessary tools in creating and controlling the mines’ pitch-dark, three-dimensional space. Nystrom demonstrates that these neglected artifacts of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have much to teach us today.

About this title

About the Author

Eric C. Nystrom is a historian in the College of Science and Letters at Arizona State University. He is the editor of Mining History News and the author of "Underground Photography and American Mining before 1920," which won the 2010 John Townley Award for best journal article from the Mining History Association.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Nevada Press
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0874170079
• ISBN 13: 9780874170078
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320