Edward Beatty
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780520284890
- eISBN:
- 9780520960558
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520284890.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, Latin American History
The use of cyanide to refine gold and silver provides our third detailed case study. Beginning in the 1890s, miners and metallurgists working in Mexico introduced the use of cyanide to separate gold ...
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The use of cyanide to refine gold and silver provides our third detailed case study. Beginning in the 1890s, miners and metallurgists working in Mexico introduced the use of cyanide to separate gold and silver from their ores, which is representative of a broader set of processing technologies within the export sector. Though quickly applied in gold mines, efforts to adapt cyaniding to Mexico’s predominant silver ores proved much more difficult. Sustained experimentation eventually yielded the necessary adaptations, and by around 1906, the cyanide process dominated all precious metal refining. As with glass bottles, the challenges of adoption created many opportunities for substantial learning. In mining, however, it was foreign workers, engineers, and managers who accrued new expertise, most of whom would leave Mexico during the revolution. Mexican engineers and skilled workers, who had played prominent roles in the industry a generation earlier, had been largely squeezed out.Less
The use of cyanide to refine gold and silver provides our third detailed case study. Beginning in the 1890s, miners and metallurgists working in Mexico introduced the use of cyanide to separate gold and silver from their ores, which is representative of a broader set of processing technologies within the export sector. Though quickly applied in gold mines, efforts to adapt cyaniding to Mexico’s predominant silver ores proved much more difficult. Sustained experimentation eventually yielded the necessary adaptations, and by around 1906, the cyanide process dominated all precious metal refining. As with glass bottles, the challenges of adoption created many opportunities for substantial learning. In mining, however, it was foreign workers, engineers, and managers who accrued new expertise, most of whom would leave Mexico during the revolution. Mexican engineers and skilled workers, who had played prominent roles in the industry a generation earlier, had been largely squeezed out.
