Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1886-12-17
ALUMINIUM.
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BE Made Avseso6se,

AkVMlNUMS
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Be Made Avees0bso.
Philsdelphta Tcssgr.phl
We have no authentic history Of the
gradual introduction Of iron into the
uses of civilized man; but given the
rough brown or gray stone that wa
have in our ores, it is evident that the
whole was not transformed in an hour
Or day into the exquisite temper Of
the Damascus blade. Il is also prob
able that, while it was still q rare and
expensive metal, available only to those
Who were high in wealth and rank, the
possibilities of its varied structure were
we'll known. But to bring all of these
varied uses to which it has attained
within the grasp of the ordinary man.;
has taken untold centuries of pains and
labor, and discovery upon discovery
has been required to develop il.
Now new metal is coming upon tho
field, which some claim will soon be all
it's own, and iron, the metal heretofore
without its peer, and the greatest factor
OF human progress, must step down
and out Aluminium. they say, can be-
hardened till the diamond is its only,
rival; it can be drawn into ware 80
fine or hammered into sheets 80 thin
that the gold beaten alone can do the
work; the tensile strength of its wire
rises to 100000 pounds to the square
inch Of section; water and the atmos,
phere cannot corrode it; it will burnish
like polished silver, blows cannot crys-
talize it, and its conductivity of heat
surpasses that of copper. Then it's
alloys make an anti-frictioa metal that
goes beyond the power of brass or bab-
bitt to produce.
Before such qualities as these iron
pales into the merest insignifcanoe.:
But before we throw away our hammer
and chisel, or break oar locomotives up
let US look at what has made IRON the
metal of the world. Its easily summed
up in two words, "its eheapness. With
crude iron at l cent pound, all things
seem possible for it to accomplish, but
multiply it by ten and all our COM
monest conveniences will vanish liks
breath.
Sixty years ago . drop Of aluminium
was produced in German laboratory
after research Of fifty years with the
best appliances Of the time, and twenty
years more were necessary TO produce
larger bead. Then in ten years more
the metal was on the market at 1872 per
pound.
Since then chemistry has peen strug-
CLING with the task. and by it's constant
efforts the price has dropped to slb for
q pound, and now new disooverer tells
that it can be put upon the market at
! 81 to the pound. We know the metal
we'll, and the chemist has tried it in his
laboratory; he has hammered and drawn,
and melted and hardened, until every
quality is known, but still the prioe
must make it rare. It costs one-eightA
the price Of thirty years ago, and still It
is 400 times the cost of iron. So il
matters little that it stands third in
quantity of all the substances of which
the earth is formed, that it lies about
us in every bed of clay, or shale, and
that nearly every rock is but an ore bed
with wondrous possibilities; so long as
nature holds the secret key by which It
can be unlocked and freed from the
combinations in which we find it, it
cannot take the place Of iron. That
this may come in time is not beyond
the range of what can be regarded as =
possibility, but it must come by slow
and labored steps; meanwhile, our iron
will hold its own and be used as hereto
fore, while aluminium must he labora-
tory metal for while. and get occa-
sional application in the more expensive
implements of science.