The Savannah morning news., 1903-05-03
The Wonderful Tin-Pest.

ne phenomenon mas been named
"tin-pest," and the explanation has
been advanced that tin retains its dis
tinctive and most valuable attributes
only in temperatures above 20 degrees.
In cold greater than this structural
modification occurs quickly, and if the
cold is pushed to an intensity great
enough to disintegrate the tin, it often
crumbles away in a grayish powder.
In temperatures that do not often
fall far below 20 degrees, the changes
are extremely slow, unless the tin be-
comes infected with the GRAY modi-
fication." If some of the gray powder
of tin that has happened to disinte-
CRATE should attach itself to the sound
tin, then the disease communicates it
self rapidly to all parts of the metal.
In the cases of tin plates such as
are used for roofs, the tin is not a
chemical individuality of its own, but
is a mixture of iron and tin, both of
which have already passed through
several notifications during the pro-
cesseS of conversion into plates.
Therefore, the process of infection
becomes complicated and a tin roof
offers a less resisting field than pure.
tin.
Now, if metals can be thus infected
with disease, it follows that they can
be inoculated as organic substances
can be. And as science has gradually
built a bridge between animal life and
plant life so it appears possible now,
to find bridge between the lower
phases of plant life and the so=called
inorganic or dead world.
The "Life" of Metals.
To the layman the fact that metals
can be treated indefinitely by heat
without destruction, seems naturally
to prove that they can possess the at
tribute which is called life" But the
whole course of plant life depends on
temperature and its changes, and
temperature affects all animals, in
Guiding man, even producing illness
| and death when the changes are sud-
den.
In other words, as gradual and nor
NAL changes of temperature affect ami
NAL and plant life normally, SO they
do metals; and abrupt and abnormal
| changes of temperature. change the
structural form of each.
The phrase Interchangeable as steel
| is decidedly incorrect. Steel in it's
making has to undergo all the changes
that the animal body undergoes in the
| course of growth. 1t is a combination
| ganic. The German metallurgists
have come to speak as a matter of
| course of the life that unfolds itself
| in steel under the various tempera-
lures that are applied to it in working
| it.
During the course of its changes,
it often develops qualities that make
| it useless for industrial purposes
/ while they last. Thus at one step it
| becomes brittle-a temporary diseased
condition that yields to what might al
most be called the medical treatment
of heat properly graduated.
Poison this steel with hydrogen or
| heterogeneous matter and you sicken it
so decidedly that it gets into a condi-
| ton where it is as brittle as if it had
been ruined in tempering.
Prof. Heyn has been studying the
changes in iron under all grades of
| temperature, and he holds that the
metal passes through various stages
of disease that produce structural
changes just as cells change in form,
size and position in the forms common
ly called organic"
He heated copper in order to find
why that metal suffers from over
heating, and his conclusion is that it
becomes poisoned with copper protox-
ide. which so sickens it that its struc-
ture changes and partially breaks
down.