'By the Light of Knowledge ...'

Series

Series Name

Mining Review 18th Year

Issue

Issue No.

7

Date Released

Mar 1965

Stories in this Issue:

1. 1Computers
2. 2Coal and Soap
3. 3'By the Light of Knowledge ...'

Story

Story No. within this Issue

3 / 3

Summary

NoS synopsis: How an idea for a coal cutting machine, the Anderton Shearer Loader, became a reality. James Anderton, the inventor, is awarded the Institute of Mining Engineers Medal
NCB Commentary - On January the 29th., 1965, the medal of the Institution of Mining Engineers was awarded to James Anderton - the medal which is held by only three other mining engineers now living.
The story begins in 1952, when the first Anderton Shearer Loader - a coal-cutting machine - started work in the St. Helens Area of Lancashire.
For some time, with the help of his engineers, James Anderton, then Area General Manager of fifteen collieries, had been working on the idea of turning an ordinary coal-cutter into a machine which would both cut and load the coal.
The breakthrough came when he decided to take-off the cutter’s jib - the part which cuts the coal - and fit instead - a horizontal shaft. On this shaft he mounted a drum - and around the drum keen-edges picks to shear out a strip of coal 19-inches wide along the coal face.
Behind it the machine hauled a plough to sweep the coal onto the conveyor during the machine’s cutting run along the coal face - and when the machine returned to start another cut more coal was pushed onto the conveyor.
Early in 1954 a St. Helens newspaper reported this revolution in mining technique.
The Anderton Shearer Loader swept into the coal-faces of Britain; till in 1957 there were more than 220 of them cutting and loading a fifth of all Briatin’s coal.
But that same year, 1957, came a check. For the first time since the war Britain’s coal production outstripped demand, and above all, there was too much small coal - which was precisely the size of coal the Anderton Shearer Loader produced most efficiently.
Production and mechanisation men met to talk over the next move. To get more large coal it seemed that they must scrap all they had achieved and start again.
So it was back to the drawing board. Throughout the next year at collieries and in the new Central Engineering Establishment at Bretby, mining enginers worked out ways to make the Shearer Loader get more large coal.
They took off the drum and substituted a cutter shaped like a frame.
They upended the original horizontal drum.
They put a boring tool in place of the drum, and called it a trepanner.
This last attempt was a solid success. Now the engineers were sure that they could modify the original Shearer Loader to do almost anything they asked of it.
Today there are a bewildering number of modifications of that first simple breakthrough. Two drums on one machine, cutting on two levels - and backwards as well as forwards, can take care of thick seams of coal. The Anderton Shearer has survived triumphantly; today getting large coal as well as small.
Naturally, it was to become the first machine to cut and load coal by remote contol - without a man on the coal face.
The demand for energy is always increasing. By 1970 we should be supplying 100-million tons of coal for electrically - and the power stations like small coal.
The Shearer Loader has come to stay - today 630 are at work in Britain: 400 have been sold overseas.
This rare medal is a tribute, not only to James Anderton himself, but to all the others who helped him to develop his idea to become an international success.
"By the light of knowledge thou shalt conquer."

Keywords

Mining; Inventions and discoveries; Awards and honours

Written sources

British Film Institute Databases
Films on Coal Catalogue   1969, p.50
Film User   Vol.19 No.224 June 1965, BIFA Bulletin p4.
The National Archives COAL 32   /13 Scripts for Mining Review, 1960-1963

Credits:

Sponsor

National Coal Board

Production Co.

National Coal Board Film Unit