Benjamin Drake Van Wissen

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Benjamin Drake Van Wissen, born in Melbourne, Australia (March 17, 1892 - November 5, 1984), was a renowned Civil Engineer.

Van Wissen joined the World War I war effort as an Engineer, but was best known as the first manager of the mining operations of the large guano deposit located on Nauru island in the Pacific Ocean after its capture following WWI. Guano was mined for its phosphates - for use as a fertilizer, most of which were shipped back to Australia.

Benjamin Drake designed an efficient harvesting machine for the guano that maximized the extraction of phosphates from the island, and to this day a similar system is in place.

Van Wissen remained on Nauru for most of his life. A statue of him can be found on the island, commemorating his investment of time and energy in the Nauru guano mining program, as well as his many innovations in its harvesting.

This does not adequately cite its references or sources.
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. (help, get involved!)
Any material not supported by sources may be challenged and removed at any time. This article has been tagged since June 2006.


 This Australian biography article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../b/e/n/Benjamin_Drake_Van_Wissen_68fd.html"
Advanced Search
Included Web Search Engines


Safe Search

close

Top Matching Results

Occasionally Search.com will highlight specialized results that are based on the context of your query. Examples of specialized results include specific links to news, images, or video.

Top Matching Results may highlight information from other Search.com pages, content from the CNET Network of sites, or third party content. The listings are based purely on relevance. Search.com does not receive payment for listings in this section but our partners that provide this data may get paid for listing these products.

Sponsored Links

This section contains paid listings which have been purchased by companies that want to have their sites appear for specific search terms and related content. These listings are administered, sorted and maintained by a third party and are not endorsed by Search.com.

Search Results

Search.com sends your search query to several search engines at one time and integrates the results into one list which has been sorted by relevance using Search.com's proprietary algorithm. You can customize the list of search engines included in your metasearch from the preferences.

The search engines that are used in your metasearch may allow companies to pay to have their Web sites included within the results. To view the Paid Inclusion policy for a specific search engine, please visit their Web site. Search.com does not accept payment or share revenue with any search engine partner for listings in this section.