Inexperienced men with a dream and a desire roamed the Western Hills with guts and a Geiger counter. Failure was their usual lot but the fortunate few saw their efforts rewarded - - a machine shop operator, an electric repairman, a necktie salesman, a restaurant owner. However, the bulk of the discoveries was made, as you would expect, by the skilled professionals. So it was that the uranium industry was born out of wedlock, its creation unsanctified by the laws of supply and demand. As the AEC purchase program finally evolved, the yellow cake prices for contracts running until 1962 were based on a guaranteed ore price plus an estimated milling cost including rapid amortization of the capital cost of the mill, plus a profit. So the high cost producers got a high price and the low cost producers a low price, and neither price was in any way related to existing or potential civilian usage. Under these contracts the prices ranged from $ 7. 46 a pound to as high as $ 13 a pound, and this is an important point to remember because presumably the production costs of the mines and mills involved varied accordingly. Later the Atomic Energy Commission pegged the price for purchases from 1962 to 1966 at $ 8 a pound. What Noah Webster didn't realize was that, given the proper incentives, miners will look under every rock and every bush in the quest for what they seek. In less than a decade the uranium boom brought into being over 1, 000 uranium mines and 25 privately financed mills, having a combined rated capacity of 22, 000 tons of uranium oxide a day. From almost nothing reserves rose to 241, 000 tons - 4 -