Editing Copper extraction (section)

===19th century===
The introduction of [[reverberatory furnace]]s to [[Chile]] around 1830 by [[Charles Saint Lambert]]<ref name=CLperJM&SC>{{cite book|title=Mining in Chile's Norte Chico: Journal of Charles Lambert, 1825-1830 (Dellplain Latin American Studies)| author1=John Mayo |author2=Simon Collier | date=3 September 1998 | publisher=Westview Press Inc|isbn=978-0-813-33584-1}}</ref> revolutionized Chilean copper mining.{{sfn|Sagredo|2005|p=277}} In addition to this there was improvements of transport caused by the [[History of rail transport in Chile|development of railroads]] and steam navigation.{{sfn|Camus|2005|p=282}} Prospector [[José Tomás Urmeneta]] discovered rich orebodies at [[Tamaya (mine)|Tamaya]] in 1850, a site that became one of Chile's main copper mines.{{sfn|Sagredo|2005|p=277}} All of this made Chile supply 18% of the copper produced worldwide in the 19th century and the country was from the 1850s to the 1870s the world's top producer.{{sfn|Sutulov|1975|p=3}}{{sfn|Camus|2005|p=233}} In some years Chile's copper production made up about 60% of the worlds output and its [[tariff|export tariff]] made up more than half the state's income.{{sfn|Sagredo|2005|p=280}}

Lambert's success in modernising the Chilean copper industry during the second quarter of the nineteenth century is thought to have sowed the seeds for the later demise of his own copper smelting business (among others) in [[Swansea]].<ref name= "Minchinton2013">{{cite book|editor-first=W.E|editor-last=Minchinton|first=R. O.|last=Roberts |chapter=Non-ferrous smelting| title=Industrial South Wales 1750-1914: Essays in Welsh Economic History|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hXD_AQAAQBAJ&pg=PA141 |date=5 November 2013|publisher=Routledge| isbn=978-1-136-61779-9|page=141}}</ref><ref name=SwanseaselonJW>{{cite encyclopedia |title=Swansea |url=https://www.britannica.com/place/Swansea-Wales|author=Jeff Wallenfeldt |encyclopedia=Encyclopaedia Britannica |access-date=8 June 2019}}</ref>

By the late 19th century the Chilean mining industry once again lagged behind technological developments (e.g. [[Froth flotation|flotation]], [[Leaching (metallurgy)|leaching]], large-scale [[open-pit mining]]) contributing to the drop of its share of the world production to 5–6% in the 1890s and similar shares remained in the 1900s and 1910s reaching a low of 4.3% in 1914.{{sfn|Sutulov|1975|p=3}}{{sfn|Sagredo|2005|p=290}}{{sfn|Camus|2005|p=236}} Up to the 1940s and 1950s there was also a notable lack of major copper exploration efforts by large mining companies that relied on purchasing prospects already known from the activity of small-scale miners and [[pirquinero]]s.{{sfn|Camus|2005|p=241}}