Idaho County free press. [volume] (Grangeville, Idaho Territory) 1886-current, 1886-12-31
THE POSSIBILITIES OF ALUMINIUM.
How and When Irons Great Rival May
Be Made Available.

We have no authentic history of the
gradual introduction of iron into the
uses of civilized man; but given the
rough brown or grey stone that we have
in our ores, it is evident that the whole
was not transformed in an hour or day
into the exquisite temper of the Damas-
Gus blade. 1t is also probable that while
it was still a rare and expensive metal,
available only to those who were high in
wealth and rank, that the possibilities of
its varied structure were well known.
But to bring all of these varied uses to
which it has attained within the grasp of
the ordinary man has taken untold cen
turtles of pains and labor, and discovery
upon discovery has been required to de-
velopit.
Now a new metal is coming upon the
field, which some claim will soon be all
its own, and iron, the metal heretofore
without peer, and the greatest factor
of human progress, must step down and
out. Aluminium, they say, can be hard
ened till the diamond is its only rival; it
can be drawn into wire SO fine or ham,
mered into sheets so 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 atmosphere cannot corrode
it; it will FURNISH like polished silver,
blows cannot crystalline it, and its con-
ductivity of heat surpasses that of cop
per. Then its alloys make an anti-fric-
ton metal that goes beyond the power of
brass or babbitt to produce.
Before such qualities as these iron
pales into the merest insignificance But
before we throw away our hammer and
chisel or break our locomotives up let us
look at what has made iron the metal of
the world. 1t is easily summed up in
two words, "its cheapness." With crude
iron at cent pound all things seem
possible for it to accomplish, but multi
ply it by ten and all of our commonest
conveniences will vanish like breath.
Sixty years ago drop of aluminium
was produced in a German laboratory
after a research for fifty years with the
best appliances of the time, and twenty
years more were necessary to produce a
larger bead. Then in ten years more
tiie illttdi w DIS tii0 lldIk0L DIT per
pound.
Since then chemistry has been strug-
Cling with the task, and by its constant
efforts the price has dropped to $50 for a
pound, and now new discoverer tells
that it can be put upon the market at -
to the pound. We know the metal well,
and the chemist has tried it in his labora-
tory; he has hammered and drawn, and
melted and hardened, until every quality
is known, but still the price must make
it rare. 1t costs one-eighth the price of
thirty years ago, and still it is 400 times
the cost of iron. So it 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 possibili-
ties; 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 can not take the place of
iron. That this may come in time is not
beyond the range of what can be re-
garded as possibility, but it must come
by slow and labored steps; meanwhile
our iron will hold its own and be used as
heretofore, while aluminium must be a
laboratory metal for while, and get oc-
casional application in the more ex-
! pensive implements of science.-Power.