Lot of 6 items pertaining to mining pioneer Dr. Julius Loevy and his laboratory:
1) Hand-written note by Dr. Loevy on his company’s stationery in German language, signed and dated 18 October, 1899;
2) A 5-page Memorandum of Agreement entered into between Adolf Goerz and Company and Julius Loevy on 20 April. 1893. According to the agreement Loevy shall enter into the services of Goerz & Co in the capacity of Manager of the Chemists & Assayers Laboratory of Goerz. The agreement stipulates that Loevy “shall devote the whole of his time, skill and attention to the conduct and management of the laboratory, and that he shall be entitled to receive a one third share or part of the profits not to be less than 900 Sterling per annum over a period of three years. It was also agreed that all profits which may accrue from any experiments, inventions and patents being the result of the industry of Loevy shall be divided equally between the two parties. The agreement features a Zuid Afrikaansche Republiek Zegelrecht seal duty;
3) An article on Dr. Loevy’s Laboratories which appeared in the South African Mining Journal of 1 May, 1897;
4/5) Two large plans of Dr Loevy’s Laboratory (Supplement to The SA Mining Journal 1 May, 1897);
6) An 8-page Supplement to Chemiker-Zeitung (No.69, 1897) featuring an overview of Dr. Loevy’s laboratory.
All items original, legible, and in very good condition.
"Julius Loevy, a German chemist came to the South African Republic in 1891 and settled in Pretoria. In March that year an English translation of a German paper by him, "The tubercular and the bacillus, and Dr Koch's new method", was published in the Agricultural Journal of the Cape Colony. It contained a popular account of Dr Robert Koch's discoveries in connection with tuberculosis. The next month Loevy was licensed by the Republic's Board of Examiners to practice as an analytical chemist.
"Loevy's more important research dealt with the chemistry of the recently introduced MacArthur-Forrest process for the extraction of gold from refractory ores by means of cyanide solutions. Between April 1892 and April 1893 he registered four patents in the Transvaal relating to this process. The first was for a method to render cyanide solutions harmless; the second for a method to increase the recovery of gold by means of cyanide solution and precipitation; the third, with Leopold Kessler, for a method to purify gold after its precipitation and recover the metals used in the precipitation process; the final one concerned a new method for precipitating gold from solutions by means of electrolysis, while at the same time regenerating the solution chemicals.
"During 1893 Loevy visited Europe to purchase equipment and after his return set up an analytical and metallurgical laboratory in Johannesburg. There he performed inorganic and organic chemical analyses, including analyses of water, human remains, liquors and foodstuffs; toxicological, hygienic and physiological examinations; and microscopical and bacteriological investigations. In May 1894 he became a foundation member of the Chemical and Metallurgical Society of South Africa.
"Several accounts of his chemical investigations were read before the society and published in its Proceedings. Some of these were performed for the government of the Republic and concerned the quality of drinking water for Johannesburg and Pretoria, leading to a paper on "Johannesburg water from a hygienic standpoint". However, his more important work still related to the recovery of gold and led to the presentation of several papers: "Notes on the action of alkaline sulphides in cyanide solutions"; "Assaying of graphite crucibles" (1898); an account of cyanide poisoning (1899); "The composition of slimes" (1898); and "Notes on the estimation of sulphides in cyanides" (1899).
"In 1893 and again in 1895 Loevy indicated to the government of the Republic that he would like to be appointed as government chemist, but no such appointment appears to have been made. In September 1897 he became a member of the SA Association of Engineers and Architects. In 1899, at the outbreak of the Anglo-Boer War, he returned to Europe, but was still listed as a member of the (renamed) Chemical, Metallurgical and Mining Society of South Africa in 1905. At that time, he worked for Ad Goerz and Co. in Berlin, Germany. Later he practiced in Brussels before settling in Chile, where he remained for the rest of his life". -Source: Biographical Database of Southern African Science
"Adolf Goerz was a German mining engineer who came to South Africa in 1888 on behalf of the Deutsche Bank (His brother-in-law, George von Siemens, a member of the well-known family of electricians, was one of the founders) to explore the investment possibilities of the new gold-fields. He was the first to introduce Continental, particularly German, capital into the Transvaal Republic. He formed a syndicate to finance and develop mining propositions and founded the Rand Central Ore Reduction Company to treat gold tailings, etc. by special methods which achieved considerable success. In 1895, with German, French and British capital, he combined his interests to establish the firm A. Goerz & Co, the forerunner of the Union Corporation which was one of the five original mining houses of South Africa. He was also a director of the National Bank of the Republic".
"Goerz, the mining expert and trained technician, looked at the mines from a standpoint entirely different from that of most of his colleagues. ... a special attention for him was bound to lie first of all in the technical problems, in the solution of which he could take a share; ... as if it had been his ambition to prove that under expert management even second-rate and worse mines could be turned into profitable undertakings. He took a prominent part in the solution of many of the other technical problems; he was, for instance, largely connected with the erection of the Rand Electric Works, and the moving spirit in the foundation of the Rand Central Ore Reduction Works, a metalkurgical undertaking the general operations of which consisted of smelting and refining.
"Goerz Limited had gradually developed into a great mining house which turned to the opening on its own account of new districts and the flotation of mines; Modderfontein Deep and Geduld Proprietar, both formed in 1899, were the best of many".
-Sources: Standard Encyclopaedia of South Africa, Nasou Limited, Pretoria, 1972, Volume 5, page 218. Randlords, Paul H. Emden, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1935. Pages 340-342.
Adolf Goerz died in 1900 at the age of forty-three. Though he did not live to see the immense success of the mines he had founded he ranks nevertheless as the (mining) pioneer of the Far East Rand, one of the few men of his generation who believed that the eastern gold-field would prove to be as rich as the Central Rand. -Source: The Gold Miners, Purnell & Sons, Cape Town, 1962. Page 178.
- Overall Condition: Very Good
