he resigned after making "charges of the most sensational character" against state Mineralogist Lewis E. Aubury over what was termed "Mismanagement, . . . public advertisement of private interests and a desire for personal aggrandizement." He also claimed the bureau was under the control of "the Octopus," the Southern Pacific Railroad and its minions. Aubrey countered that Hyde spent "too much time theorizing, with the result that nothing was getting accomplished in the museum" and was "a savant with his head swelled out of all proportion." When Hyde asked for a two-week vacation, Aubrey said, "I gave [him] a vacation and a long one at that." The state's board that governed the bureau met to discuss Hyde's claims and decided by unanimous vote, "That the matter . . . be ignored entirely." Hyde's reformer's zeal would arise throughout his life, often to his discredit. By 1910, according to Hyde, he was considering relocating to Mexico to aid in the government's planned education reforms, when the Mexican Revolution intervened. He instead took a job in London, which would bring him fame and notoriety. Flotation process In 1989 Hyde was posthumously inducted into the National Mining Hall of Fame and Museum in Leadville, Colorado, as a result of his installation of the first froth flotation process in the United States. The museum states: Without this process, there would be no mining industry as we know it today: virtually the entire world of copper, lead, zinc and silver is first collected in the froth of the flotation process. . . . Froth flotation has permitted the mining of low-grade and complex ores that otherwise would have been unprofitable, and thanks to James Hyde, many old "worthless" tailings dumps have been converted into profitable mines. In January 1910, his Stanford classmate Theodore J. Hoover offered Hyde a job with the Minerals Separation, Limited, of which he was manager in the London Office. The firm had perfected an early froth flotation process in their labs and in the field, and introduced it with great financial success at the massive zinc-lead deposits of Broken Hill, Australia. Hyde accepted, moved to London, and was immersed in studying the revolutionary new process for working low grade ores. In what was a defining moment in his career, he left the company after a year to lead in the technology's transfer to America. He was following in the time honored