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One for the Day: Afterscapes
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Afterscapes - what remains when the mill, mine or plant has left. Also see Landscapes of Desindustrialization.
FACILITY: Mine gas drainage
Site: Shaft 5, Ewald Colliery, Herten, Germany
Status: Most surface facilites torn down and shaft filled in 2001
Photo taken: December 2004
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One for the Day: Industrial Workplace
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FACILITY: Shaft entry control room
Site: Shaft 2, Ewald Colliery, Herten, Germany
Operator: DSK Deutsche Steinkohle
Photo taken: December 2004
Status: Closed down, partial demolition of related facilities finished just before Christmas
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One for the Day: Steam Winding Engine
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I made myself a very nice Christmas present and went to explore a lesser known steam winding engine: a model set up at Ewald Colliery shaft 1, Herten, by Eisenhütte Prinz Rudolph, Dülmen, in 1926. Out of service for decades and probably without maintenance since the late 1970ies, it still is in mint condition. You see the Koepe sheave driving the winding rope via static friction, the crank shaft and its bearing, the bevel gear drives for the camshafts and parts of the belt brake system. Also visiting workshops and other secondary facilities, the return air shaft, the three story entrance to shaft 2 and a complete skip extraction system at shaft 7, this has clearly been the most interesting and pleasant tour for quite a while.
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Sortie des Explosifs
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FACILITY: Explosives storage
Site: Charbonnages du Hasard SA, Cheratte, Belgium
Status: Closed down in 1977
Photo taken: October 2004
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One for the Day: DK Blast Furnace
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I am currently going through older photos in my collection and came across this one which is interesting for both what it shows and for what the company operating this machine does, so let me show it to you despite of its rather poor technical quality.
What it shows: One of two furnaces of the DK Recycling und Roheisen GmbH blast furnaces plant. In contrast to most other blast furnaces still operating, these are very small ones: the combustion chamber ends right above the double bend in the long tube you see in the center. What makes them special is the way they get charged. While most modern furnaces get charged via skip inclines, this plant features basket charging (Kübelbegichtung). The big box top left is a crane lifting burden baskets vertically, then travelling horizontally and emptying the burden through a funnel into the combustion chamber. The few other plants using this technique of limited capacity include the now derelict Maxhütte and the vintage Völklingen plant.
What the company does: Producing pigs (Roheisenmasseln) of a specific pearlite cast iron quality from metallic residue like filter dust. This is the only company I know of that has this kind of recycling know-how, that operates a pig-casting machine and that runs a smelter plant specifically to serve the casting industry.
RELATED ON THE WEB
In the past, DK recycled not only iron, but a wide variety of metal residues in a then much larger plant. Michael aus dem Spring has a large collection of historic photos.
RELATED ON THIS WEBLOG
2004-06-20: HKM Blast Furnace A
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Homeland Security
Episode I: "Four days after police at Charles de Gaulle Airport slipped some [live!] plastic explosives into a random passenger’s bag as part of an exercise for sniffer dogs, it is still missing - and authorities are stumped and embarrassed."
Episode II: "Security screeners at Newark Liberty International (sic!) Airport lost track of a bag containing fake explosives and allowed to be loaded on a flight to Amsterdam."
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New Microsoft Patch Blocks Firefox Downloads
"Microsoft Corp. today released a new security patch for its Internet Explorer (IE) web browser which prevents users from accidentally or intentionally downloading the new free, open-source Firefox browser from The Mozilla Foundation. [...] Asked whether Mozilla's free email program, Thunderbird, could also pose a threat to Microsoft's Outlook, the spokesman said, 'There is no competition for Outlook. We have not heard of Thunderbird, and we are not now preparing a patch to block it, which will be released in January.'"
Full Press Release >
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One for the Day: After Phoenix
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Landscapes of Desindustrialization (I): Phoenix iron and steel works, Dortmund, Germany, November 2004
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Acélváros
Normally, I point to interesting photo galleries in my Quick Links section. Acélváros by Hungarian photographer Imre Benkö deserves a full entry. Acélváros, Steel Town, shows the faces of people in Hungary's steel and iron industry. It is a sad, moving and fascinating account. Possibly, the photos have been taken around the former industrial center of Miskolc which saw its ruin in the late 1990ies. When I spent some time at this town's technical university, people didn't want to talk about "the mill" too much and even more they didn't want us to see it: US Steel had bought the local fully integrated steelworks and closed it down virtually the same day to make operations of its nearby Kosice/Slovakia mill more profitable. After lots of pleas, our guide finally ordered our driver to take us on top of a hill for some brief moments where we could oversee the plant and the endless rows of prefabricated high-rise buildings attached to it. It filled the entire valley, and it was all dead. Noone said a word.
Acélváros I >
Acélváros II >
Acélváros III >
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One for the Day: Monochromatic
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FACILITY: Secretary's desk in a part of the barracks that has been used as a civil hospital until spring of this year. One of those occasions with "the light just right".
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FACILITY: Car maintenance shop
Variance in style: Monochromatic photography seems to be a field worth to explore further.
Location: Camp 7, Suffolk Barracks, British Rhine Army, Dortmund
Photos taken: December 2004
Current Status: Partly unused, partly rented out; sold to an investor, teardown and redevelopment to start next spring.
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Two for the Day: Haus Aden colliery
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FACILITY: Shaft 1, Haus Aden Colliery
Photo taken: May 2004
Status (then): Closed down, shaft filled
Status (now): Prepared for teardown; at least one of the two winding machine houses torn down; photo standpoint torn down
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FACILITY: Shaft 2, Haus Aden colliery (depth -1,031 m)
Photo taken: May 2004
Status (then): Shaft 2/East used for occasional personnel and equipment lifiting. Mine gas emerging from Shaft 2/West used to feed six gas driven block heat and power plant modules operated by Minegas GmbH.
Status (now): Mine gas power plant completed, buildings surrounding the headgear and the powerplant prepared for teardown or already town down, photo standpoint torn down
Operator: DSK Deutsche Steinkohle
Location: Bergkamen, Germany
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Two for the Day: Fürst Leopold colliery
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FACILITY: Shaft 2, Fürst Leopold colliery
Photo taken: July 2004 on Canon G1
Changes since: None known of
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FACILITY: Shaft 1, Fürst Leopold colliery
Photo taken: May 2004 on Canon S40
Changes since: None known of
Operator: DSK Deutsche Steinkohle
Location: Dorsten, Germany
Status: Conveyance ceased in 2001. Since 1998, joint operation named "Bergwerk Lippe" with Westerholt colliery, Gelsenkirchen: only secondary task remain at this site. The coal processing plant you can see on the Shaft 1 photo has been in operation 1983 - 2001. There are plans to tear down the headgears and to preserve the processing plant as a museum. This would be the only museum of its kind, but I think it is unlikely to happen.
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Almost forgot
"I heard Robdy's piece Clubbed to Death which is a mix of classical music and electronic 'groove' in a club in London almost a year before I met Yolande. DJ James Lavell (he launched the 'trip hop') was just mixing music and played Clubbed to Death. I was fascinated by this music. When I played it during the filming, the crew was just as fascinated and gradually the song became the emblematic music for the film, it was finally even given the same title."
Interview with Director Yolande Zauberman on the soundtrack of his movie Clubbed to Death
While talking with Heiko about slightly dadaistic blog postings it suddenly occured to me that I didn't mentioned the mother of all soundtrack thefts in my prior posting: the Clubbed to Death case. Clubbed to Death is a nice 1996 underground movie from France, called "Lola im Technoland" in the German language version, with phantastic photography, and Clubbed to Death is a great piece of music by Robert Dugan that carries the entire movie. Most of you will know this song: three years later, it has been reused in The Matrix. Chapeau! Now, enough of trivia blogging.
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One for the Day: Belgian Cityscape
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Wading through the lowerings of postcard photography, let me show you this photo: View across the town of Seraing onto city center the Seraing coke plant, illumanted by a setting winter sun
Operator: Cockerill Sambre Groupe Arcelor
Location: Seraing, Belgium
Photo taken: November 2004
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Sountrack recycling
Is this a new trend to recycle motion picture soundtracks? When the opening scene theme of Schindler's List reminded me of Por Una Cabeza by Carlos Gardel featured in the Tango scene in True Lies, I didn't pay too much attention to it. Enter the Kronos Quartet case. In the most excellent - but widely unknown - movie A Requiem for a Dream, the most excellent Kronow Quartet score is the foundation of the whole story, and it is addictive, which is what this movie is about. Without this very score, the movie wouldn't work. One Hour Photo with Robin Williams is quite OK to watch - until the police and resolving scene, when a key theme from Requiem for a Dream is re-used. This messes up everything. You instantly see the scorewriter as an uninspired sucker who thinks that his audience isn't watching off-mainstream movies anyway. Bad move. Now I find Rufus Wainwright's Hallelujah first used in Shrek recycled in the otherwise pretty good Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei. Here, it doesn't destroy the whole experience, it even is a good match, but still it's a bit annoying. A Nick Cave piece would fit in well here, too. It even wouldn't be copied.
And on today's playlist: downbeat Another Night In by Tinderstick on the Back To Mine album by Faithless and the entire club-style From Here On In album by a combo named South.
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One for the Day: Industrial Landscape
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FACILITY: Seraing coke plant
Operator: Cockerill Sambre Groupe Arcelor
Location: Seraing, Liege area, Belgium
Capacity: 800,000 t/a out of four batteries with a total of 139 ovens
The trip to Belgium has been great. Photo opportunities to fill years with in the Liege area alone. This photo has been taken in brightest backlight on a nearly cloudless midday. Read, the reddish cast in the right third of the photo is due to emissions from the coke plant. Filters? What filters? :-)
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One for the Day: Hot Metal
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FACILITY: LD steel mill for stainless steel grades
Process: A Basic Oxygen Vessel has just been charged with hot metal smelted in this electric arc furnace. Even the tiny fraction of hot metal remaining in the ladle is enough to illuminate the entire surroundings. During the LD steel making process, the metal will gain its metallurgical characteristics.
Company: TKS Nirosta Stainless Steel, Bochum, Gemany
Photo taken: July 2004, Canon G1
Changes since: None known of
Off for a day in Belgium. You have to travel far these days to see some living industry. Next on this weblog: what high-power medium- and shortwave transmitters have in common with server computers. Stay tuned.
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Bush arrested on war charged
Google News top story: Bush arrested.
Nearly.
For the same reason lunatics can spread their word on Google News: if the algorithm thinks you are a newspaper, you are in.
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The next big thing
I might be a bit late to report it, but Diego Doval's company Clevercactus is running out of funding, so he is looking for the next big thing to do. Technically, Diego did the whole Clevercactus application on his own, which is a hell of a result. What a shame it has to go down the drain because funding is so hard to find. While I know how it feels to depend on the next round of VC, I don't know how it feels if it is your very own company and the round fails. But I do know that Diego is a very smart guy, and it always is a pleasure to have a conversation with him. So if you have something interesting in the queue, drop him a note.
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One for the Day: Dry room
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FACILITY: Dry room (Kaue)
Site: Hoesch Bergwerk AG
Status: Closed down in 1966
Photo taken: November 2004
Changes since: none
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