Swent Noel Kirshenbaum’s oral history is important for its breadth and historical sense, as well as its technical information. Trained at Stanford and the University of California at Berkeley as a metallurgist, he worked in various parts of the United States, as well as Argentina and Peru, and retired as North American project manager for Placer-Dome, a Canadian company. As an advisor to the oral history series on Western Mining, he was instrumental in facilitating the interview of Evan Just and was an important source of background information for several others. Noel Kirshenbaum was a founder of the Mining History Association and thinks in an international and historical framework, making him an ideal interviewee. He tells what he did in his day and furthermore places these experiences in their historical context. His particular interest is in transportation of materials; he is also informative about mining practices now practically obsolete, like smelting and dredging.