Lyon County times. [volume] (Silver City, Nev.) 1874-1907, 1907-08-03
VARIOUS USES
OF COPPER

VI UUI Ill
The average man if asked to name,
off-hand, the uses of copper, would be
likely to reply that the metal was used
mainly for coming pennies and making
wire, yet these uses employ barely more
than quarter of the copper that is pro-
duced. On second thought he might
smile at naming copper coinage as an
important consumer of the metal, vet
his first thought would be nearer right
than his second, for the Chinese Empire
has used 50, 900 tons of copper for max
ing new coins within the past two years,
thereby increasing the circulating me-
dunn OF the country to the extent of
four ounces to each inlabitant for
while $4,000 tons of copper is large
quantity of metal, sufficient to load
thousand freight cars of the heaviest
but quarter of an avoirdupois pound
per capita, when divided among 400, 600,
600 people
Only the expert or those engaged
most actively in the copper industry,
have the slightest idea of the diversified
uses to which copper is put, as shown
by chapter on the uses of the metal III
the new edition of the Copper Hand
book, published by Horace J. Stevens,
of Houghton, Michigan According to
this book copper enters into almost ev-
cry form of human activity, and the
multiplicity of its uses is most s.. prising
Electric light, power and traction are
immense consumers of the metal in the
form of wire, and telephones and tele-
graphs find it indispensable, vet cleo
tricity only requires trife more than
quarter of the metal made The engi-
neering trades consume more than half
OF all the copper produced, mainly in
the form of brass, but there are about
score of friction metals and alloys, each
having its specific use, into which cop
per enters as a component part.
sumers of copper, and this sort of con-
sumption is increasing rapidly. Copper
roofs, cornices and fronts adorn the ex-
teriors of business buildings in thousands
of towns, while for interior work the
great majority of modern buildings use
copper, brass or bronze locks knobs and
butts. Brass pipes, nickeled, are in
modern bathrooms and laboratories, and
brass and bronze chandeliers, gas and
electric fixtures are almost invariable
A dozen or more other very common do
mestic uses of copper are mentioned.
In the manufacturing world the uses
of copper and brass are innumerable.
One concern in the Naugatuck Valley of
Connecticut, buys copper III ten-ton lots
monthly, solely for the making of watch
dals, all of the better grade dials being
of copper, enameled. The common pin
requires hundreds of tons of copper an
nually, insignificant as single pin may
SEEM Balls for shoes and tips for shoe
laces require metal by the scores of tons,
and the thin metallic tips on rubber-tip
ped lead pencils are responsible for a
surprising depletion in the stock of the
metal.
In addition to the consumption of the
metal itself, tens of thousands of tons of
copper sulphate are required for the arts
and manufactures and for horticulture
purposes, in spraying fruit trees, bushes
and vines. 1t is very evident, from
perusal of the book in question, that
copper plays vital, and far more inn
portant part than commonly supposed,
in Twentieth Century civilization.