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Show Teacher, Club Woman, Mother 193 being artists, and thus still lovers of nature at heart, many of them, not surprisingly, appear to have been reminded of an armor-plated monster out of antiquity." Predictably, reports of the machine in the media resulted in great national interest. During the years immediately after World War II, coal mining was staggered by frequent strikes, resultant shutdowns, and spiraling operating costs, and was challenged fiercely by growing competition from producers of other fuels. The continuous miner, which was placed on the market in 1949 when the coal mining was weak and industry engulfed by labor trouble, and when more of the world's energy was being furnished by oil than by coal, in the words of the Denver Post, "gave hope to a failing industry. Never did Harold Silver consider ranking his various inven tions in terms of their importance to Colorado, the West, the nation, or the world. Each invention was a solution to a prob lem he had recognized or one that had been called to his atten tion. Each required hard work over a period of many months, "28 each caused him to risk his limited financial resources, and each made high demands on his creative It must have been genius. enormously satisfying to" him, as it was to Madelyn and their children, that in the book Machines, published by Time Incorporated in 1964, Harold's continuous miner was listed as the 150th major invention in the history of the world." A photo of the machine in that work carries the caption, '''Chewing Out' a Coal Seam the Modern Way," and explains: Rearing like a hungry dinosaur on the prowl, this orange pick monster is the mechanical substitute for a coal miner's ax. As the machine rumbles along under its own electric power, its six rows of teeth rip coal from underground seams with savage efficiency at the rate of five tons minute. This per multiple exposure, which demonstrates the miner's flexibili ty, shows its hydraulically operated jaws in several "chew ing" positions." Madelyn was especially pleased that the royalty income from |
