, 1889-08-21
THE ALUMINIUM AGE.
The CHILD IS BORN THAT WILL
SEE 1T FULLY REALIZED.

full and Now Most Difficult Metal to
HandIe-But In Time Inventors VIII Do
Even Better Than the seymour Method.
To aluminium enthusiasts the death of
Fred ]. Seymour will be most keenly
felt. For the man who believed, and
believes, that it is the metal of the
future, and that 1t is being developed
through slow stages, there is some CON
ISOLATION left.
Others are at work at this moment
perhaps hundreds of them-as many, no
doubt, as are at work on any other one
thing, striving by night and by day TO
usher in the aluminium millennium at the
earliest possible date, with every chance
of success in their favor.
The metal is known to exist in every
clay bank and in every rock, great and
small; it is more plentiful than all other
metals combined; the modus operandi
whereby it is separated is well known to
chemists and mineralogists already; the
objective point of all this research is
~cheapness. The Seymour process did the
work more cheaply than any other yet
devised; hence the lamentations over his
death.
CONFLICTING r
Even with the Seymour process the
cost of producing aluminium has been so
great as to exclude it from general use.
1t has been announced at least n half
dozen times that a new and cheaper mode
Of chemically extracting the precious
metal from its earthly base mad ''just
been discovered" Still it was worth
$4,000 a ton, according to Mai. Powell,
of the geological survey.
The newspapers reported the shipment
OF 100 pounds of chemically pure alumni
mum, manufactured under a new pro-
cess, from Newport, KY, to Londonr
England. in August, 1888.
The same account, besides telling us it
was the first of the metal ever extracted
from clays for the purpose of shipment
In the United States, tells us how it sold
for fifty cents per pound. Both allega-
tions must be untrue, as the Engineering
Journal of March this year gives a tabu-
lar exhibit of the value of rare metals.
in which it classes aluminium rs being
worth $3.50 per pound. The Journal is
good authority, too.
About the time of this reported ship
ment of aluminium from Kentucky an
other and more startling story was cabled
from Germany. According to the Ger
man Don QuiXote aluminium was being
rapidly turned out in 100 pound bars at
the Krupp gun works at n cost of less
than twenty cents per pound. Teutonio
"goaheadness" did not cast n bar and a
half and then make n shipment like they
did in the land of blue grass, but they
turned them u in great bars as rapidly
as a wood chopper would sticks of wood
and piled them up for future use, per
haps with a view to cornering the alumni
mum agei
This metal of the future, of which so
much has been said, was discovered by
Professor Wohler in 1928. While seek
ing to settle in his own mind the ques-
ton as to what were the component
parts of common clays, and while fusing
a mass of the yellow mud at a white heat
under the blow pipe, he a%ccidently OBJ
tained n single minute globule or BEAD of
what was to him and the rest of the
scientific world at that time a new metal.
Subsequently by various chemical tests
he proved the drop to be the precious
aluminium. He surely did not consider
his discovery of grave importance, other
wise he would have given it more atten-
ton than he did; as it was, it appears
that he did not experiment with the
aluminium idea in view again for some
thing like eighteen years In 1916 he re-
discovered it in n mixture of cloride of
aluminium and common salt. This time
the metal vas obtained in quantities suf-
fcient for moro extensive examination.
1t was found TO be a white metal between
the color of zinc and silver, but with n
more BLUSH tinge than that found in the
last named metal.
Its specific gravity is from 90 to 2.67,
according to purity, that of the average
grade being about % times heavier thar
water. 1t is four times as light rs sill
ver-in other words, a coin the size of a
silver dollar made of aluminium would
weigh about the same as n twenty cent
piece in silver. 1t has great rigidity and
tenacity; is nearly as hard as iron, but
can be wrought into wire as fine as spi.
der webs after being thoroughly an
nealed.
WONDERFUL QUALITIES.
By being subjected to the g~oldbeater's
art, a piece of aluminium the size of a
dime may be- beaten into a sheet several
feet square, 50 great is its tenacity. Only
two metals known can be rolled into a
sheet as thin as it can, and they are gold
and silver. When it does at last come
into general use, and the advent of that
era will not be retarded much by the
man whose death furnishes the text for
this article, it will be used for every
thing and put to every purpose to which
iron, steel and wood are now put. Its
a~daptability to ship building is very APP
parent.
Great steamships, the size of the larg-
est Cunards, with the same tonnage and
the same number of exposed linear feet,
if constructed of aluminium from keel
to the top of the masts, instead of draw
ing eighteen to twenty-six feet, would
mot draw more han four or five. In the
days of the future aluminites deep water
conventions will be useless ass~emblages.
1t holds a polish the best of any metal
known, there being but few elements
that will cause it to tarnish or turn
black. Rust, too, is n quality unknown