Anton Eilers

Friedrich Anton Eilers (born January 14, 1839 in Laufenselden , † April 22, 1917 in Sea Cliff , Long Island ) was a German-American metallurgist and industrialist .

Life

Anton Eilers studied at the Bergakademie Clausthal and the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen . In 1858 he became a member of the Corps Brunsviga Göttingen . In 1859 he emigrated to the United States . In 1863 he joined the mining consultancy firm Adelberg & Raymond and for the next three years traveled all over the United States to assess the mining industry. From 1866 to 1869 he was director of the Betty Baker Copper Mine and Furnace in Carroll County, Virginia . After the local copper deposits were exhausted, he worked for the next seven years as deputy for Rossiter W. Raymond, US commissioner for mining statistics for the states and territories in the Rocky Mountains and west of them.

In 1876 Eilers went to the Salt Lake Valley , where he became a partner and general director of Germania Smelting and Refining Works , which processed lead ores containing silver. By avoiding the formation of salamanders , which he achieved through the exact dosage of slag formers , he was able to significantly improve the running time of the shaft furnaces. With the construction of larger, technologically revised ovens, he caused a sensation in the professional world. With Gustav Billing as a partner, he built the Arkansas Valley Smelting Works in Leadville , Colorado from 1879 , which he successfully operated over the next few years.

In 1883 he founded the Colorado Smelting Company , which processed the lead ore delivered by railroad from the Madonna mine with new, state-of-the-art furnaces in Pueblo (Colorado) .

From around 1890 he and friends founded the Montana Smelting Company with large plants in Great Falls (Montana) . This was consolidated in 1899 with the East Helena Smelting Works and most of the companies in the industry in Colorado to form American Smelting and Refining Co. , which had a market share of 67% in the USA when it was founded. He was a director and technical director of that company and American Smelter's Securities Co. until 1910 when he retired from management. He also belonged to the board of directors of Wells Fargo , the Seneca Mining Co. and the United Missouri River Power Co. on. Most recently, he was Vice President of Last Dollar Gold Mining Co. in Cipple Creek, Colorado, and President of Colorado Mines Exploring Co.

Eilers was an early member of the American Institute of Mining Engineers , which he directed from 1875 to 1877 and from 1882 to 1884. He was also Vice President of the Transactions of the American Institute of Mining Engineers in 1876 ​​and 1877 , in which he also published numerous specialist articles. He was a member of the American Forestry Association , the American Association for the Advancement of Science , the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, and the Technical Society of New York . Eilers is considered one of the most important figures in the US ore mining and metalworking industry.

In 1863 he married Elisabeth Emrich, with whom he had five daughters and one son. Like his father, son Karl became a metallurgist and was Vice President of American Smelting and Refining Co.

Fonts

• The Smelting of Argentiferous Lead Ores in Nevada, Utah and Montana , 1871 (together with OH Hahn and RW Raymond)
• The Progress of the Silver-Lead Metallurgy of the West During 1874 , 1875

literature

• Rossiter W. Raymond: Anton Eilers (obituary). In: Engineering and Mining Journal , Volume 103, No. 17, April 28, 1917, pp. 762-764
• Eilers, Frederic Anton . In: James Grant Wilson, John Fiske (Eds.): Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography . tape 2 : Crane - Grimshaw . D. Appleton and Company, New York 1887, p. 317 (English, full text [ Wikisource ]).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Kösener corps lists 1910, 64 , 331
2. ↑ Frederic Anton Eilers . In: New York Tribune , April 23, 1917, p. 5 ( digitized version )