Anthracite iron charcoal — long the fuel of preference for smelting and glass making, creating a decades long search for alternative fuels. By mid-1792 prominent Philadelphians had formed the Lehigh Coal Mine Company (LHCM Co.) to bring Anthracite to cities reachable via the Delaware River Valley, especially Philadelphia — the nation's largest and most industrialized city, though no one fully understood how to use anthracite as a sole fuel—just that "it 'could' burn 'some' of the time" with a hot enough base fire, so could augment furnace fuels. The LHCM Co. had great difficulty getting many ark-loads of coal to the docks
What a piece of work is a man lines written by Montaigne: However, rather than being a direct influence on Shakespeare, Montaigne may have merely been reacting to the same general atmosphere of the time, making the source of these lines one of context rather than direct influence. What a piece of work is a man "What a piece of work is man!" is a phrase within a soliloquy by Prince Hamlet in William Shakespeare's play of the same name. Hamlet is reflecting, at first admiringly, and then despairingly, on the human condition. The soliloquy, spoken in the play by Prince Hamlet to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in Act