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Show 192 MADELYN CANNON STEWART SILVER reporters, and articles appeared in the New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, Chicago Tribune, Newsweek, Time, Business Week, and many trade journals. Early in 1949 there were Age. illustrated articles in Life, Fortune, Coal Age, and Iron Articles about the machine, which all identified Silver as the inventor, used imaginative language in describing it and stressed the expected revolutionary impact. Newsweek called the machine a mechanical dragon; the Christian Science Monitor said it resembled an Army tank. The Chicago Tribune com pared it with a giant red lobster which, powered by electricity, could move its "head" and "tail" at a forty-five degree angle, with a "body," the center section, containing caterpillar-type tracks that enabled it to move in any direction. Electrified Industry referred to it as a "Coal Mining Miracle," and Life named it a "gargantuan mole." A description in Fortune was perhaps the most colorful: This orange-colored machine in action is a wonder to behold; the ripping head sinks into the working face, rears and swings and bites again. The caterpillar treads crawl, the chain conveyor fills to overflowing, and a mountain of coal builds up behind the flexible' tail." Fortune was so fascinated with the continuous miner that it went to the unprecedented action of asking seven prominent artists to do artistic renderings. In introducing the paintings, the magazine commented: , The enthusiasm of the painters commissioned for this col lection was partly due to the fact that they were introduced to a machine whose form is fabulous, and whose function, in its underground habitat, is clearly dis once it is placed cernible. The Continuous Miner hits layman and artist alike with a stirring visual impact. But there is something more than mere mechanical mobility. Here is such a powerful pres ence that some of the painters temporarily abandoned abstraction to let the spirit of the machine invade them. Yet |
