New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1908-10-04
THE "NLCHROME" WIRE
Product Of Driuer- Harris Company
Long Sought by Electricians.

| F@or years engineers and chemists have Deen
working on alloys in effort to produce perfect
resistance wire for use In all electrical heating
snnsratuE Many wires answering the purpose IN
| a measure have been the result each having l's
own peculiar and merit, bat thousands nave
/ never successfully passed he experimental stage
Few havo been of practical 1t has fallen TO
the Driver-Harris Wire Company to produce re-
sstance wire that overcones faults and obJectlohs
and yet remains commercial product lIis
| wire has been named Nichrome, and is one OF the
most interesting of the exhibits at the Eieclfle2i
! Show at Madison Square Garden
Nichrome has sixty times the resistance of cop
per. more than three times that of German silver
Until lively recent times German silver was
the widely used resistance wire. Electricians
have been aroused to great enthusiasm by the al.
of Nichrome and the public demonstration OF
I it's great range of utility. high resistance wire
has sought long that its discovery ana prdc
teal manufacture have opened up new posslohltieS
| in the field of heating and cooking by electricity
| for Nichro.ne can be made either in wire, ribbons
| or sheets
The trouble heretofore has been to obtain re-
sistance wire that would stand an intense neat
! without becoming brittle. or oxldlzing- German
| silver which contains zinc when heated becomes
brittle: therefore German silver cannot he USED
/ where there is high temperature In eiectlcitS
/ the resistance wire is used TO produce neat anu
the greater heat the wire will carry in a small
area without deterioration the more practical 1t IS
Resistance wire acts a friction 70 the current
and generates the heat-by resisting the pass
/ ing of the current
| Until now platinum has been the most desirable
metal for resistance wire but its great cost has
made il prohbitive except in special lines. Plat-
mum has times the resistance of copper, Ger
man silver eighteen times and Nichrome sixty
times, and the of Nichrome is only fraction
a pound of the cost of platinum an ounce
/ To illustrate the meaning of the discovery OF
! Nichrome Take a Nichrome wire one foot long
and copper wire 90 feet long. both the same size
The Nichrome will produce sixty times as much
he Wi
Nichrome permits of the concentration of heat.
German silver cannot safely be worked above SVJ'
F. without becoming brittle; Nichrome is worked to
above red up 1909 F. without danger of dis
migration brittleness scaling. So far the only
which it has not been found adaptable is In
the more delicate instruments for it has high tenn
perature coefTicient and decided thermo-electrc
effect against copper. For the latter use Driver
Harris have a copper-nckel wire called Advance,
which is especially designed for delicate measur-
ing instruments
Unlike the high resistance nickel-steel alloys
Nichrome is non-corrosive, which overcomes one of
the great disadvantages of such alloys and proves
big feature and boon to the trade. In fact, this
is one of the points which has led the Navy De-
partr1ent to specify In many of its contracts the
use of Nichrome- The new alloy is especially
valuable in arc lamp resistances. commercial re-
distance units, rheostats and controlling apparatus.
which covers vast field in electricity.
Wire can well be called the vitals of all cleo
trical apparatus as represents the arteries the
veins the nerve centres. the heart through which
the electric current pulsates giving life to ma
chimes light to night. heat in cooking and energy
to countless thousands of objects.
The Driver Harris Company's plant, at Harrison,
y j. is one of the most interesting factories to
electricians the country, for here are manu-
featured the coarsest wires down to strands as fine
as the silken web of the spider All these various
/ wires form the company's exhibit at Madison
Square Garden. but it is Nichrome that arouses
the most interest It will cheaper the cost of heat
ing and cooking utensils and take the place OF the
/ highly expensive ovens used by dentists.
! of course Nichrome is only one of many special
{ wires the company makes. The many new appli-
of electricity have called for the production
of alloys having high cpecifc resistance A re-
J sistance metal meet the requirements OF present
practice must possess in addition TO high specific
resistance some all of the following properties:
ductiblity, high melting point, homogeneous struct-
ure low temperature coefictent, must be non
corrosive and have a low thernc- electric effect
against copper. It's resistance must be uniform
and Interchangeable and it must not become brittle
with repeated heating and cooling. As no single
alloy il is asserted. has been discovered which
possesses all of these qualities. such concern as
] the Driver-Harris Wire Company is called on TO
make resistance wires adapted to various lines OF
-orl-