medal in the Brunswick museum. Prominent in figure 4 is an aqueduct, one function of which is to supply a waterwheel in the house below, which in turn delivers power through the Stangenkunst to two open shafts. The reverse (fig. 5), an unusually fine view of the inner workings of a mine, shows, above ground, a typical horse whim driving a bucket windlass. Below ground is shown a crank-driven piston pump typical of those driven by Stangenkunst. In this case, however, it is driven by an underground vertical treadmill.

Figure 3.—Brunswick Silver 4 Taler, Ernst August, 1685. (U. S. National Museum, Paul A. Straub coll.; Smithsonian photo 43334-A.)

Figure 4.—Medal, 1690, Showing St. Anna Mine, near Freiberg. (Photo courtesy of Stadtisches Museum, Braunschweig.)

Figure 5.—Reverse of Medal shown in figure 4. (Photo courtesy of Stadtisches Museum, Braunschweig.)

The resemblance of the German term for bag (Bulge) to the Latin term for bucket (bulga) instead of the Latin term for bag (canalis), and the presence of buckets (Kübeln), bags (Bulgen), pockets (Taschen), or cans (Kannen) as components of three of Agricola’s four categories of hauling machines are reasons enough for the apparent superfluity of German names, if not for his decision to avoid the use of German names. But it should also be noted that the names sometimes refer to a pump and its prime mover considered as a single machine. Such is the case with the Kehrrad, a bucket windlass driven by a reversible waterwheel which Agricola describes as his largest hauling machine.[10]

Agricola describes 23 hauling devices of these four types, the diversity resulting generally from the application of three types of prime movers, men, horses, and waterwheels, and in the endowment of each in turn with a mechanical advantage in the form of gearing.[11] Although he does not specify clearly the relative importance of the various pumps, the majority (13) use man as the prime mover. He speaks of the advantages of some, noting that the horse whim has a power two and a half times that of the man windlass, and emphasizing the even greater power available in flowing water “when a running stream can be diverted to a mine.” The most powerful machine then in use for deep mines appears to have been the horse-powered rag and chain pump.

Such, then, were the important mining machines of this early period of deep mining, according to the leading authority. But did they continue, as has been claimed, to