Roger Stern papers
Canadian patent method for producing sponge Iron, 1963.
Collection area: Borderlands
Collection dates: circa 1955-1978
Contains biographical information, subject files, reports and printed materials, 1955-1978, relating chiefly to his career as an engineer and manager at Compañia Minera de Cananea in Sonora, Mexico, and as a consultant with the firm Pincock, Allen and Holt in Tucson, Arizona.
The majority of the alphabetically arranged files reflect topics concerning copper mining operations in Cananea, Mexico. Each file may contain correspondence, memorandum, research notes, blueprints, or printed materials from administrators, researchers, or suppliers to Stern relating to various processes and products in the mine. The major departments of the mine were Open Pit Mining, Concentrator, Leaching and Precipitation, and Smelting; support facilities included power genera-tion, shops, and railroad.
The largest files are: Cananea Reports, which contain documents on particular phases of the operation; Field Trips and Other Operations, which were written by Stern and other engineers in the 1950s and 1960s and detail visits or studies of related mining ventures, mainly in Arizona; Pincock, Allen & Holt, which contain his consulting activities during the late 1970s; and Supplementary Printed Materials, which hold brochures, equipment catalogs, and similar information on a wide variety of mining topics. Of interest in this folder is his copy of
Some materials in Spanish.
Roger Stern was born September 17, 1915 in New York, New York and raised in California. He attended schools in Glendale and graduated from San Diego State University in 1938 with a B.S. in Physics. He served in the U.S. Navy in the field of Aviation Electronics from December 1944 to March 1946. Roger Stern married Caroline Vota Stern; they had 3 children.
His extensive career in the mineral industry spanned more than 40 years; he worked mainly in Mexico. From 1937 to 1941, he began as an assayer-metallurgist and superintendent at the El Fenomeno Mine in Ensenada, Baja California. From 1941 until 1955, Stern worked for American Smelting and Refining Company (ASARCO) in various lead-zinc operations in Mexico, including positions in ore testing, metallurgical accounting, and management.
In 1955, Stern resigned from ASARCO to accept the position of Chief Metallurgist with Cananea Consolidated Copper Company in Sonora, Mexico, also known as Compañia Minera de Cananea. During his twenty-two years with the company, he held various positions, and retired on September 30, 1977, as Assistant General Manager. Following his retirement, Stern acted as a consultant for Pincock, Allen and Holt, a mining industry consulting company in Tucson, Arizona. His expertise was in the fields of mineral dressing, flotation, crushing, copper smelting, and fire refining.
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