History of applied coal petrology in the United States I. Early history ofthe application of coal petrography in the steel industry

In May of 1992, a seminar entitled "An Oral History of Applied Coal Petrogr aphy" and the Triangle Run'' was held at Southern Illinois University, Carb ondale, for the purpose of recording the personal accounts of four of the p rincipal scientists involved in the initial application of coal petrology t o the manufacture of metallurgical coke and subsequent developments. The fo ur scientists included William F. Berry, Ralph J. Gray, William Spackman, a nd Richard R. Thompson. Under the direction of Dr. William Spackman, founde r of the Coal Research Section at The Pennsylvania State University, innova tive fundamental studies of the properties and thermal behavior of coal and coal macerals resulted in the development of integrated coal and coke rese arch programs and laboratories at US steel companies. These studies also st imulated the beginnings of a series of fruitful collaborations between indu stry and universities. Unique among these cooperative efforts was the free exchange of information that took place over a period of 25 years when scor es of people interested in the practical applications of coal petrology tra veled to confer with researchers and technicians at US Steel, Bethlehem Ste el, and the Coal Research Section (the "triangle run"). Prof. Spackman's st udents, as well as students of other universities, became the developers an d managers of company-specific petrographic classification and prediction s ystems used to control the quality of metallurgical coke and to formulate c oking blends. These systems allowing each company to evaluate and utilize t heir own or other available coals are still in use today. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.