Call Number:

013

Repository:

Science History Institute Archives

Extent:

20 photographic prints (2 boxes)

Language:

English

Preferred Citation:

Vanadium Corporation of America Photograph Collection, Science History Institute Archives, Philadelphia, PA.

Date:

1911-1976 (inclusive)

Creator:

Vanadium Corporation of America

Form:

Photograph collections, Photographs, and Archival materials

Abstract:

Photographs and ephemera related to the Vanadium Corporation of America, a company devoted to the mining, development, and application of metals and ferro alloys.

Vanadium, a malleable transition metal, was discovered in its natural state in Mexico by Andres Manuel Del Rio in 1801, though it was not isolated and recognized as an element until 1830. While vanadium was crucial to the creation of stronger and harder steel, the high cost of extracting it limited its use, even amidst the growing industrial output of the nineteenth century. Following the discovery of a large deposit of vanadium in the Peruvian Andes in 1905, vanadium became commercially viable and significantly impacted the steel industry. In 1906, the American Vanadium Company was organized to mine the new deposit, known as Mina Ragra, and use of vanadium to produce specialty steel alloys quickly became widespread, particularly in the burgeoning automobile industry. Renamed the Vanadium Corporation of America in 1919, the company eventually grew to include smelting plants in Niagra Falls, New York and Bridgeville and Chester, Pennsylvania, as well as deposits in Colorado and Southern Rhodesia. The Vanadium Corporation of America was acquired by the Foote Mineral Company, a bulk supplier of industrial minerals, in 1967.

This collection consists of photographs and ephemera documenting the facilities and activities of the Vanadium Corporation of America from 1911 to 1976. While the collection is not a comprehensive record of the company, the materials provide a good snapshot of the significance of vanadium mining to industrial output in the first half of the twentieth century. Most notable among the photographs are a series of prints of the Mina Ragra deposit in the Peruvian Andes dating from 1911. The collection also includes photographs of facilities at the Bridgeville plant, as well as various plants acquired by the Vanadium Corporation throughout the United States. Several photographs of Foote Mineral Company sites, as well as a folder of ephemera containing several booklets and studies produced by the Vanadium Corporation in the 1950s, rounds out the collection.