In the early 1970s, my brother Tony and I were staking fractions for Don McLeod’s Vancouver-based Northair Mines. The day was cold and damp, and we were perched high up on Sproat Mountain near Whistler, B.C., fumbling with the Topofil, an inadequate distance-measuring device that was made in France.
Tony threw it to the ground and promptly stomped off the field. But not all was lost, for on this day, out of necessity and a “higher calling,” my brother invented the hipchain.
The hipchain typically measures 180 mm long by 100 mm wide by 100 mm high, and can be mounted on a belt, or, more often, on a backpack, thus freeing the hands for note-taking, soil-sampling, tree-cruising, etc. It consists of an optical encoder that records revolutions of a wheel wound with relaceable cotton thread. Most hipchains can read up to 29,999 metres (99,999 ft.) and are accurate to within 5 metres per kilometre.
By fixing the hipchain at a given point, one can measure precisely how far one has walked away from that point. Contrived by Tony in a simple bait box, the hipchain changed the way surveys were conducted the world over.
This was evident when, a few years later, I spied my brother’s hipchain, in its now familiar yellow Topometrics box, in the window of a mining supply store in Cairns, Australia.
Through good times and bad times, the mining industry has produced a great many innovators. My brother is one, and to him and all the other unsung heros, we tip our hats.
— The author is the president of Ashworth Explorations.
Be the first to comment on "From the hip"