The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1890-03-28
A Wonderful Metal.

1Outn 8 COmIa .-is
Aluminium or aluminium is beautiful
white metal, which in its appearance and the
uses to which it can be put resembles silver
| Above all its other properties, the one which
distinguishes it most is its lightness.
Zinc and tin are two and one-half times as
heavy, iron almost three times, copper three
and one-half times, silver four times, lead
four and one-half times, gold seven and
one-haf times and platinum over eight
times as Heavy as aluminium, bulk for bulk.
1t was for long time suspected that COM
mon alum and china clay and minerals such
as corundum contained some undiscovered
metallic base but not until the year 1897
was any one successful in isolating alumni
| ium from these substances. In that year Il
German chemist named Wohler accomplish
| ed this feat. -.a...... ...-..... .....
The earth is full of aluminium, yet, as is
the case with many other metals, it is not
| found in nature in free, metallic state, but
| is always combined with oxygen or other ell
ements. Alumina and silica occur combined
| together in most of the rocks which form the
earths crust, in the soils which cover the
| fields, in the clay which is baked into bricks
| for our houses or worked into porcelain to
adorn our tables.
From this brief mention of the occurrence
| of aluminium in nature, it is seen that alum
inium ore can be had very cheaply and in un-
limited quantity indeed, mineralogist5 who
have studied carefully the materials that form
the earth's crust say that if the earth is Of the
same composition all through, as it is on the
surface, about one-eighih of its entire weight
must be aluminium.
1t is extremely difficult to extract the metal
from its ore, and for this reason alone the
| metal Is costly.
Wohler's aluminium cost many times its
weight in gold. Thirty years elapsed after
! it's discovery before it was made cheaply
enough to be of any use.
Henri St. Claire Deville, a professor of
chemistry in Paris, built large works to carry
out a process he had devised, and in 1862
aluminium was being sold at twelve dollars a
pound. This price was low enough to per-
nit its use for many purposes, and opera
| glasses, Sextants, scientific instruments, meC-
ais, spoons, table ware, sword-handles, he'll
NETS, and even toys were made of it.
The price, however, was still too high to
permit its common use, and articles made OF
it could scarcely be considered anything but
luxuries. ..
During the last six years New York gen.
tleman, named MIR. Cashier, invented pro-
cess by which he has been able to sell alum
inium at less than five dollars pound
Within few months past the invention of
anOtDer American, MT. HAL, Oh TltISDuTg,
has brought the selling price down to two
dollars a pound. '. Fl.
Besides its lightness aluminium reslsts al
teration in the air wonderfully well. We all
know how iron rusts. copper corrodes, brass
furnishes and silver blackens, but none OF
these things happens to aluminium. 1t may
be kept in water, exposed to the weather,
hung on the wall, or kept in air full of vapors
and corrosive gases without anything but a
very slight, almost invisible, white tarnish
forming on it. 1t is, therefore, almost as
non corrodible as gold, the king of metals,
and so we are not tar wrong in calling alum
inium one of the noble metals. 49,
Every one has observed how silver-ware
blackens when left exposed to the air, the
black coating being silver sulphide formed
by sulphurous gas in our houses which comes
originally from sulphur in the coal we burn.
But service of aluminium plate would never
blacken from this cause. You could put
pure sulphur into an aluminium egg cup, and
set fire to it without furnishing the alumni
ium, whereas a silver cup treated SO would
| be made as black as a lump of coal.
| Aluminium, however, possesses almost all
the properties of the common metals besides
many of those of the noble ones. 1t can be
worked into almost every required way. The
wire-makers can draw it into wire as fine
as hair, the rnetal-rollers can roll it into