Anthracite iron as an ingredient into a reverberatory furnace (and in later years, a Bessemer converter). Anthracite, also known as stone coal or rock coal, is very difficult to ignite, mine, clean, and break into smaller chunks and requires correct conditions to build heat or hold temperature and sustain burning—which oft depend upon the size and uniformity of the coal particles. Yet American cities were cramped for fuels, woodlands were exhausted near bigger towns and Philadelphia, largest city in America needed fuels for mills and foundries as well to sustain manufacturing. Inventor and industrialist Josiah White (owner of a wire mill, foundry
Anthracite The advertisements featured a white-clad woman named Phoebe Snow and poems containing lines like "My gown stays white / From morn till night / Upon the road of Anthracite". Similarly, the Great Western Railway in the UK was able to use its access to anthracite (it dominated the anthracite region) to earn a reputation for efficiency and cleanliness unmatched by other UK companies. Internal combustion motors driven by the so-called "mixed", "poor", "semi-water" or "Dowson gas" produced by the gasification of anthracite with air (and a small proportion of steam) were at one time the most economical method of obtaining