Pittsburgh Making Pig Iron c1900 Keystone Lantern Slide

 

This is a photographic glass magic lantern slide, black and white, labeled, "Emptying Cooled Pig Iron from Moulds into Car, Pittsburgh Pa." Pig iron is the intermediate product of smelting iron ore with coke and resin. Pig iron has a very high carbon content which makes it very brittle and not useful directly as a material except for limited applications. The traditional shape of the molds used for these ingots was a branching structure formed in sand, with many individual ingots at right angles to a central channel or runner. Such a configuration is similar in appearance to a litter of piglets suckling on a sow. When the metal had cooled and hardened, the smaller ingots (the pigs) were simply broken from the much thinner runner (the sow), hence the name pig iron. As pig iron is intended for remelting, the uneven size of the ingots and inclusion of small amounts of sand was insignificant compared to the ease of casting and of handling. This slide is from a set of 600 slides produced by Keystone View Company around 1900 although many views were taken well before that time. This is slide #64 of the series. These views also exist as stereo views. Slides were meant primarily to be used in schools but are now valued because of their historic photographic views. Lantern slides are one of the best untapped resources of photographs there are. Although once plentiful, few of these slides exist today because over the years they have been destroyed and discarded. Slide is 3 1/4" x 4", is in very good condition, and can be viewed by projecting, holding it to the light, or placing it on a light box. This slide can be made into a print or poster. If you would like information on having that done AFTER you purchase the view, please let me know. For more information on magic lanterns and slides go to www.magiclanternsociety.org.




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