Eckley Brinton Coxe, born in 1839 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, graduated from University of Pennsylvania in 1858 at age 19 with a degree in Mining Engineering. He studied abroad specifically in France at the Paris School of Mines and Freiberg‘s Mining Academy in Germany. At Freiberg, he became acquainted with Julius Weisbach, a famous professor of mechanics and engineering. Weisbach authorized Coxe to translate his great treatise, Theoretical Mechanics, published in the United States in 1870. Coxe returned to the United States in 1864 and immediately entered his family business in the technical management of coal mining in Drifton, Pennsylvania and began a highly successful business career. He seemed to have a broad interest in mining engineering as reflected by his personal technical library which was reputed to be the finest in America. Lehigh University’s Special Collections has a number of related gold and silver mining pamphlets originating from the Eckley B. Coxe Technical Library.

The Australia gold rush began in 1851and continued for a while expanding from eastern Australia to New Zealand and later to western Australia. Gold was discovered as early as 1814 by some convicts cutting a road through the bush but the real gold boom began at Bathurst in 1851 following observations made by some gold miners from the 1849 California gold rush recognizing similar geology. The amount of gold coming from Australia was so prolific that eventually Sir William Denison, the New South Wales governor, petitioned Parliament to make the gold coin minted in Sydney, Australia official “coin of the Realm” – meaning it would be recognized throughout the British Empire. Sir Alfred Churchill brought the proposal to the House of Commons. Gold mining is a speculative venture and there is constant interest in the output of the goldfields which is reflected by the Australian newspapers interest in publishing reports about the gold discoveries, the gold production and revenues resulting from the mining endeavors.