The Wilfley Table was conceived by Arthur Wilfley, a mining engineer based in Kokomo, Colorado in the United States. As a silver mine operator, Wilfley spent many years refining his separation table design in order to make the extraction of silver more economic. Rather than using heating processes (smelting) to concentrate the ore, Wilfley had been experimenting on mineral separation by use mineral density contrasts.
Wilfley was able to perfect a mechanical solution for the recovery of gold and silver from low-grade ores by means of the Wilfley table. The first Wilfley table was built on a preliminary scale in May 1895. The first full-sized table was used in Wilfley's own mill in Kokomo, in May 1896, while the first table sold for installation was placed in the Puzzle Mill, Breckinridge, Colorado, in August 1896. Patented in 1897, the Wilfley table made mining lower-grade ores profitable. Pulverised ore, suspended in a water solution, was washed across a sloping riffled vibrating table so that metals separated as they drained off.
The Wilfley Table was said to have revolutionised ore dressing worldwide and more than 25,000 were in service by the 1930s.