Overcutting

The first recorded export of timber was in the thirteenth century when cargoes were sent via Liibeck to England and the Low Countries. Although relatively easy to exploit, the forests were in no danger of overcutting until the industrial revolution and the decade 1860-70, when the wood converting industry expanded fivefold and government controls were removed.

The technical people I asked about this said it was due to the overcutting they showed me on the records: the cutting needle of the recording apparatus had swung too far laterally. This would not happen, they said, if the companies recorded at a low volume level and depended on amplification by the phonograph to step the volume up.

In the latter, “undercutting” is replaced by what we might aptly designate “overcutting" and operations precisely similar in principle, though different in detail to those employed in the winning of coal, are commenced at the roof instead of at the floor of the mine. The accompanying sketches will help to render our explanations more intelligible.