Anthracite iron combined those experiments and the new hot blast processing. In the United States, where the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company (LC&N) had begun shipping anthracite to Philadelphia in 1820 because the principles could not obtain sufficient fuels for their iron works at "the 'Falls of the Schuylkill' "—so had built the Lehigh Canal and taken over the works of the haphazard Lehigh Coal Mine Company—by the late 1820s having established works that were running smoothly, after building America's second operating railroad in 1827, they'd great interest in exploiting the great anthracite deposits of Schuylkill County for ironmaking, which mills foundries
Anthracite February 1808, by Judge Jesse Fell in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, on an open grate in a fireplace. Anthracite differs from wood in that it needs a draft from the bottom, and Judge Fell proved with his grate design that it was a viable heating fuel. In spring 1808, John and Abijah Smith shipped the first commercially mined load of anthracite down the Susquehanna River from Plymouth, Pennsylvania, marking the birth of commercial anthracite mining in the United States. From that first mine, production rose to an all-time high of over 100 million tons in 1917. Anthracite usage was inhibited by the