Reading Anthracite Company Reading Anthracite Company Reading Anthracite Company is a coal mining company based in Pottsville, Pennsylvania in the United States. It mainly mines anthracite coal in the Coal Region of eastern Pennsylvania. The company owns the Bear Valley Strip Mine in Northumberland County, Pennsylvania. Reading Anthracite Company; origins date back to 1871 when its predecessor, the Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company (P. & R. C.& I.) was chartered. As a large publicly traded concern, P. & R. C. & I. had diverse industrial interests which revolved primarily around its main business of railroading. P. & R. C. & I.
Anthracite iron differently designed furnaces. The first American smelt of Anthracite Pig Iron was performed July 4, 1840 by principal-partners David Thomas, Josiah White and Erskine Hazard at their Lehigh Crane Iron Works in their first hot blast furnace along Catasauqua Creek aided by Samuel Thomas and the employees of the LCIW, in what became Catasauqua in Northampton County, Pennsylvania. The technology enabled industries the chance to produce cast iron sufficient to demand and eventually adapt production to also feed the demand to generate wrought iron and steel. These useful materials are achieved by adding additional processing — by taking pig iron