Carrie Everson

Carrie Jane Everson (born Rebecca Jane Billings; 27 August 1842–3 November 1914) was an American who invented and patented processes for extracting valuable minerals from ore using froth floatation.[1] The Mining Journal noted in 1916 that "as a metallurgist she was a quarter of a century in advance of her profession."[2]

Carrie Everson
Carrie Everson in 1864
Born
Rebecca Jane Billings

22 August 1843
Sharon, Norfolk County, Massachusetts, USA
Died3 November 1914
San Anselmo, Marin County, California, USA
NationalityAmerican
SpouseWilliam Knight Everson
ChildrenJohn Lewis Everson

Life

Everson was born and educated in Massachusetts.[3] Everson discovered that if fats or oils are combined with an ore, the oils adhere to the metals and not the rock. On her lab bench she tested this technique with gold, copper, antimony, and arsenic ores. She was awarded two United States patents for her discoveries, US471174A[4] and US474829A.[5] By 1890, she had tested her process, with the help of others, at Georgetown and Silver Cliff, Colorado and at Baker, Oregon. During this period her husband died and she returned to nursing school, a career she followed in Denver. In 1901, a lawyer misadvised her to not renew her patents just as the flotation process was being re-discovered in England.[6]

After her patents had expired others used her methods which she lived to appreciate if not to benefit from.[3]

Historians are inconclusive in assessing her impact on the development of the revolutionary flotation process, but agree that gender bias hampered her ability in promoting her process.[7][8][9]

In 1864, she married Dr. William K. Everson, a Chicago physician. Everson had two sons: John Lewis Everson [3] and George S. Everson (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33SQ-GYBD-HSB?cc=1417683 )

She was buried at Mount Tamalpais Cemetery on November 17, 1914.[10]

References
  1. Inventors and inventions, volume 2. New York: Marshall Cavendish. 2008. ISBN 9780761477648. Retrieved 8 June 2016.
  2. "Carrie Jane Billings Everson". Mining Journal. 101: 3. 15 January 1916. Retrieved 8 June 2016.
  3. "Inductee Database: Everson, Carrie Jane Billings". Mining Hall of Fame. Retrieved 7 January 2017.
  4. "Process of Concentrating Ores (US471174A)". Google Patents. 22 March 1892. Retrieved 7 January 2017.
  5. "Process of Concentrating Ores (US474829A)". Google Patents. 17 May 1892. Retrieved 7 January 2017.
  6. Bunyak, Dawn (2005). "The Inventor, the Patent and Carrie Everson: Defining Success" (PDF). Mining History Journal: 9–24.
  7. Bunyak, Dawn (2005). "The Inventor, the Patent and Carrie Everson: Defining Success" (PDF). Mining History Journal: 9–24.
  8. Rickard, Thomas (1932). A History of American Mining. New York: McGraw-Hill. pp. passim.
  9. Mouat, Jeremy (March 1996). "The Development of the Flotation Process: Technological Change and the Genesis of Modern Mining, 1898-1911". Australian Economic History. 36 (1): 6–7.
  10. "CJB Everson-L'Envoi".


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