PACE OF CHANGE IN MINERAL PROCESSING.

The author considers some past prognosticians of future changes in mineral processing technology and concludes that although technological change is inevitable, predicting the direction of these changes is fraught with difficulty. The author advances his own forecasts of some major changes which may come about in methods of liberation and treatment of ores of tin, tungsten, gold, diamonds, copper and other base metals in coming decades. The article identifies the liberation and separation methods in use at the time of Agricola (1550), R. H. Richards (1900), the years 1960 and 1980 and the forecast for the year 2000. 5 Refs.