Williams news., 1907-07-27
THE USES OF COPPER


 name, offhand, the uses of copper, would be likely to reply that the metal was used mainly for coining 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, yet his first thought would be nearer right than his second, for the Chinese Empire has used fifty thousand tons of copper for making new coins, within the past two years, thereby increasing he circulating medium of the country to the extent of four ounces for each nhabitant-for while fifty thousand tons of copper is a large quantity of metal. sufficient to load a thousand freight cars of the heaviest type used on American railroads, it is but a quarter of an avoirdupois pound per capita, when divided among four hundred million people.
 Only the expert, or those en- gagged most actively in the copper industry, have the slightest idea of the diversified uses to which cop per is put, as shown by a chapter on the uses of the metal in the new edition Of the Copper Handbook, published by Horace J. Stevens, of Houghton, Michigan. According to this book copper enters into almost every form of human activity, and the multiplicity of it's uses is most surprising. Electric light, power and traction are inn mense consumers of the metal in the form of wire, and telephones and telegraphs find indispensable, yet electricity requires only a trife more than quarter of the metal made. The engineering trades consume more than half of all the copper produced, mainly in the form of brass, but there are about a score of friction metals and alloys each having it's specific use, into which copper enters as com ponent part.
 The building trades are enormous consumers of copper, and this sort of consumption is increasing rapid ly. Copper roofs, cornices, and fronts adorn the exteriors of busi ness 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 bath rooms and lavoratories. and brass and bronze chandeliers, gas and electric fixtures are almost invaria ble. A dozen or more other very common domestic uses of copper are mentioned.
 In the manufacturing world the uses of copper and brass are in numera ble. One concern in the Naugatuck valley of Connecticut buys copper in ten ton lots, month ly, solely for the making of watch dials, all of the better grade dials being of copper, enameled. The common pin requires hundreds of tons of copper yearly, 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 tipped 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 re- quired for the arts and manufac- lures, and for horticulture purposes in spraying fruit trees, bushes and vines. It is very evident, from perusal of the book in question, that copper plays vital, and a far more important part than common ly supposed, in twentieth century civilization.