Jerome Lewellyn Babe (February 4, 1837 – April 8, 1893) was an American diamond miner and inventor.

Biography

Babe, an American, arrived in the

Cape Colony The Cape Colony ( nl, Kaapkolonie), also known as the Cape of Good Hope, was a British colony in present-day South Africa named after the Cape of Good Hope, which existed from 1795 to 1802, and again from 1806 to 1910, when it united with ...

(modern-day South Africa) circa 1865 as a sales representative for the

Winchester Repeating Arms Company The Winchester Repeating Arms Company was a prominent American manufacturer of repeating firearms and ammunition. The firm was established in 1866 by Oliver Winchester and was located in New Haven, Connecticut. The firm went into receivership ...

and also as a special correspondent for the ''

New York World The ''New York World'' was a newspaper published in New York City from 1860 until 1931. The paper played a major role in the history of American newspapers. It was a leading national voice of the Democratic Party. From 1883 to 1911 under pub ...

''. He arrived in Colesberg, Cape Colony on June 12, 1870 and by July 4 was at

Jacobsdal Jacobsdal is a small farming town in the Free State province of South Africa with various crops under irrigation, such as grapes, potatoes, lucerne, and groundnuts. The town was layout in 1859 by Christoffel Jacobs on his farm Kalkfontein, and t ...

Orange Free State The Orange Free State ( nl, Oranje Vrijstaat; af, Oranje-Vrystaat;) was an independent Boer sovereign republic under British suzerainty in Southern Africa during the second half of the 19th century, which ceased to exist after it was defeat ...

. At Jacobsdal he demonstrated the 1866

.44 Henry The .44 Henry, also known as the .44 Rimfire, the .44 Long Rimfire, or the 11x23mmR (11x23mm Rimmed) in Europe, is a rimfire rifle and handgun cartridge featuring a -long brass or copper case. The round has a total overall length of , with a ...

Winchester rifle's quick firing by shooting 16 rounds in ten seconds, resulting in a large number of sales. Once he completed his work for Winchester and the newspaper, Babe found that he had several months before his scheduled return journey. He decided to enter into diamond mining, having previously had experience prospecting in

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

. This was soon after the first discovery of diamonds in the region. Babe was unimpressed with the technique that was then in use on the diamond fields, of excavating a quantity of gravel and then removing it to the nearest water source, often some distance away, for washing and screening. He devised a type of dry sorting pan that could sort diamonds from the gravel without the use of water. This machine was first used at the

Vaal River The Vaal River ( ; Khoemana: ) is the largest tributary of the Orange River in South Africa. The river has its source near Breyten in Mpumalanga province, east of Johannesburg and about north of Ermelo and only about from the Indian Ocean. ...

field in 1871 and became known as the "Yankee Baby" or simply the "Baby" after Babe's surname. The machine became very popular and was still in use in the region in 1966. The "Baby" functioned as a swinging sieve (underneath a coarser sieve which separates out the larger pebbles), which allows medium-sized pebbles (which may contain diamonds) to roll into a tub. The contents of the tub are gravitated, and the heavier stones are placed on a sorting table to allow the diamonds to be hand-picked out. Sales of the Baby, income from excavating diamonds, sales of diamonds purchased from other miners, and profits from "grubstakes" (whereby he earned a cut of profits from miners to whom Babe provided capital, materials or provisions) made Babe a fortune. In 1872, he was in the eastern United States where he published a book titled ''The South African Diamond Fields''. This work was mentioned in a discussion on potential rivals by

Mark Twain Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has pr ...

in a letter to journalist John Henry Riley. Babe was robbed of $10,000 worth of diamonds from a

stagecoach A stagecoach is a four-wheeled public transport coach used to carry paying passengers and light packages on journeys long enough to need a change of horses. It is strongly sprung and generally drawn by four horses although some versions are dra ...

York, Pennsylvania York (Pennsylvania Dutch: ''Yarrick''), known as the White Rose City (after the symbol of the House of York), is the county seat of York County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is located in the south-central region of the state. The populatio ...

in July 1872. After returning to the Cape, his ventures became unprofitable and, after losing his money, he returned to America in 1873. Babe was married to Elanora Ray Babe, who died on May 28, 1893, less than two months after him.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Babe, Jerome 1837 births 1893 deaths Cape Colony people 19th-century American inventors American male journalists American miners People from Cincinnati Inventors from Ohio