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 technique & process, which he had conceived in an attempt to improve the efficiency of conventionally fueled furnaces. The first person to employ the hot blast technique to anthracite smelting was Dr. Frederick W. Gesenhainer, who filed for a patent on the process in 1831 and received it in 1833. In 1836, he tried smelting anthracite iron on a practical scale at his property, Valley Furnace, near Pottsville, Pennsylvania, while in the same year White & Hazard's LC&N Co. built two experimental blast furnaces in Mauch Chunk. He produced a small quantity of iron, but due to mechanical breakdowns, could