The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-06-27
THE STORY OF
 TUNGSTEN LIGHT God Who Gives Sunshine By
 Night A WONDERFUL METAL Great Discovery of pr. Werner Won Bolton of Germany Made After Many FaiIures-Ble Economy
 Over Old Process.
METAL

On the work bench in the laboratory of the General Electric works, before the powerful electric furnace, sat small evaporating dish containing a handful of bright, steel gun powder of peculiar metallic lustre
 What is that?" I asked with true jour nalistic curiosity
 That" answered the scientist, shaking the dish and distributing the bright metal particles, why, that is Tungsten, son of night"
 l had to confess that did not under stand his metallurgical metaphor.
 ''That little handful of powder there" he explained, Twill make more than a thousand hlaments for the new incande- scent electric lamps. The ilaments made form this rare metal, tungsten, will not only give a pure white light closely allied to actual sunlight but will give the same quantity of light as the old carbon fila ment lamp for one-third the current Consider the millions Of electric lights burned daily in the world and you can begin to grasp the importance of this wonderful metal which has leaped into such prominence and value in the last few months. It is saving the users of electric light millions of dollars every day."
 Ever since the discovery of the incandes cent lamp by Thomas A Edison 25 years ago thousands of inventors and scientists have been trying to improve upon the lamp. The original incandescent lamp a nfc Hn of bamboo, which later were discarded in favor of the carbon filaments manufact- ured from cotton cellulose.
 These lamps were the limit of extrava- gance as 93 per cent of the electrical ener- gy was wasted in useless heat, while only two per cent turned into light. The scientists tried and are still trying hard to initiate nature and produce an electric lamp which will reverse these conditions and utilize nearly all thes energy for light in the same way as the natural electric light Is produced by glow worms and fire flies.
 All attempts to make metal flaments failed, because they melted before they could be raised to incandescence It re- mained for Dr. Werner Von Bolton of Germany to discover a few years ago method of producing a pure form of the rare metal tantalum which could be made
 
 saved third of the current formerly con- i sumed and gave a beautiful white light.
 Tantalum is a rare metal found by the scientist Ekeberg in 1903, in a material obtained from Finland. It is black in color with a metallic luster and Is so hard that it is soluble only in hydro fiuoric acid. The ores from which this metal is extracted are found only In 1 few places on this earth. Pure tantalum l is harder than the hardest steel and can barely be scratched with a diamond; it will not rust; It's fusing point is exceed l ingly high it may be rolled into the thin l nest sheets or drawn into the finest wire. At first the metal, which Is of the same family as gold and silver, was very rare and costly. It existed previous to Von Bol- l tons experiments in a very impure form so brittle that nothing could be done with l it. New deposits of tantalum have recently been opened up in North Dakota and Australia which have reduced the cost so 1t Is even planned to use the metal | in tools and delicate instruments.
 The new tantalum lamp, which really was great discovery was no sooner pro- | duced commercially a few months ago | than came the news that another rare metal, tungsten, had been successfully utilized in electric lamps by German scientists at even a greater economy and 1 better results than tantalum. So, meteor l like, tanta1um astonished the illuminat- ing world one day and was forgotten the next
 Tungsten, or Wolfram, is a metal dis covered in 17s1 and names from the Swed- ish "tung' (heavy) and "sten" (stone) l It is not found native but occurs as tung- state of iron and manganese in the min l eral "wolframite" and as the calcium tungstate. The fusing point of tungsten 1 is higher than any other known metal | Vxyf fnh b1 1ac fO tn at tha l high efficiency obtained in the tungsten l lamp. One of the laws Of incandescent l light is that the higher the temperature the better the light and the greater the l economy of current consumed.
 The principal tungsten minerals are wolframite, a tungstate of iron and manganese, and scheelite, tungstate of calcium. Both minerals, like tin ores, 1 occur as a rule in quartz veins cutting rocks containing much silica such as ! granite and rhyolite. but some apparent | exceptions to this rule are found as for l instance in New Mexico where huber | n1te and small amount of scheelite | occur with pyrite and lead minerals in | a vein cutting limestone; and at Nome, 1 Alaska, where scheelte is found in the | gold placers in a region of schsts several miles from the nearest granite outcrops. | The greater part of the American tung- sten product in 1907, 1640 short tons val
 
 l Boulder county, Colo, which reported an | output of 1146 tons of wolframte valued | at S573.64274. In California which was the second state in order of production. the output was in the form of scheelite, l as was also most of that from Montana. | The total scheeite, reported was 414 short tons Small amounts of tungsten ores were also produced in Washington. Neva- | da, Arizona, and probably in New Mexico. ] Considerable tungsten is also mined in l Australia, New South Wales, South | Africa and New Zealand.
 l Up to two years ago tungsten was ] known only in laboratories and then only 1 in a very impure state and on account | But latter day prospecting has resulted in l the finding of vast bodies of the ore and 1 the price has correspondngly dropped to | about S a pound. It would be even lower 1 than this but for the difficulties in re- | fining the metal. Only with the electric | furnace is 1t possible to produce tungsten | in Its pure form. Pure tungsten is hard l enough to scratch glass; 1t is almost inn | possible to melt it: it is malleable to some extent but not ductile. Because 1t | cannot be drawn into wire the wide-lil<e | fllaments in the electric lamps are made | by the paste" process which consists of 1 mixing the powered metal with binding l or stiffening agents such as gums, dex- | Urine, etc.. until the mass has the con- | sistency of putty. 1t is then sdufrted ] through a very fine orifce in diamond | with a pressure of several tons to the | square inch. The result is a somewhat ~~I.@