The Coming Of Age Of Aluminium and the Doom of the Copper Industry

The Great Civilizing Potency Of Aluminum

The advances made in iron has reached their limit. It is unlikely for us to increase its tensile strength, elasticity, hardness, or malleability, nor improve its magnetic qualities.

• More recently, a notable gain was secured by the mixture of a small percentage of nickel with the iron.
• But there is not much room for further advance in this direction.

Iron will have to pass the scepter to the age of aluminium.

Aluminum is a wonderful metal discovered by Woehler only 70 years ago.

• The aluminium industry is scarcely 40 years old.
• It already commands the entire world’s attention.

Not long ago aluminium was sold at 30-40 dollars per pound.

• Today it costs just many cents.

Most of the metal is now produced in the electric furnace by a process combining fusion and electrolysis.

• This wastes a lot of electrical energy.

The price of aluminium could be reduced by using a similar method to mine for producing iron.

A pound of aluminium requires for fusion only about 70% of the heat needed for melting a pound of iron, and inasmuch as its weight is only about 1/3 of iron. A volume of aluminium 4 times that of iron could be obtained from a given amount of heat-energy.

But a cold electrolytic process of manufacture is the ideal solution

The absolutely unavoidable advancement of the aluminium industry will destroy the copper industry.

• Even now, it is cheaper to convey an electric current through aluminium wires than through copper wires.
• Aluminium castings cost less, and in many domestic and other uses copper has no chance of successfully competing.*

Aluminium will down copper and will fiercely struggle with iron.

How Magnetism Works

The magnetism in iron is an isolated phenomenon in nature.

Molecules behave like hollow beams:

• partly filled with a heavy fluid*, and
• balanced in the middle like a see-saw

Disturbances cause the beam-molecule to tilt.

• if it tilts one way, the body is magnetic
• if they tilt the other way, the body is non-magnetic

But both positions are stable, as they would be in the case of the hollow beam, due to the rush of the fluid to the lower end.

Most molecules went one way. But those of iron went the other way.

Unless we should make a radical departure in the character of the electric currents employed, iron will be indispensable.

Yet the advantages it offers are only apparent. So long as we use feeble magnetic forces it is by far superior to any other material; but if we find ways of producing great magnetic forces, than better results will be obtainable without it. In fact, I have already produced electric transformers in which no iron is employed, and which are capable of performing ten times as much work per pound of weight as those of iron.

This result is attained by using electric currents of a very high rate of vibration, produced in novel ways, instead of the ordinary currents now employed in the industries.

I have also succeeded in operating electric motors without iron by such rapidly vibrating currents, but the results, so far, have been inferior to those obtained with ordinary motors constructed of iron, although theoretically the former should be capable of performing incomparably more work per unit of weight than the latter.

But the seemingly insuperable difficulties which are now in the way may be overcome in the end, and then iron will be done away with, and all electric machinery will be manufactured of aluminium, in all probability, at prices ridiculously low.

This would be a severe, if not fatal, blow to iron. In many other branches of industry, as ship-building, or wherever lightness of structure is required, the progress of the new metal will be much quicker.

For such uses it is eminently suitable, and is sure to supersede iron sooner or later. It is highly probable that in the course of time we shall be able to give it many of those qualities which make iron so valuable.

While it is impossible to tell when this industrial revolution will be consummated, there can be no doubt that the future belongs to aluminium, and that in times to come it will be the chief means of increasing human performance. It has in this respect capacities greater by far than those of any other metal. I should estimate its civilizing potency at fully one hundred times that of iron.

This estimate, though it may astonish, is not at all exaggerated. First of all, we must remember that there is thirty times as much aluminium as iron in bulk, available for the uses of man.

This in itself offers great possibilities. Then, again, the new metal is much more easily workable, which adds to its value.

In many of its properties it partakes of the character of a precious metal, which gives it additional worth. Its electric conductivity, which, for a given weight, is greater than that of any other metal, would be alone sufficient to make it one of the most important factors in future human progress.

Its extreme lightness makes it far more easy to transport the objects manufactured. By virtue of this property it will revolutionize naval construction, and in facilitating transport and travel it will add enormously to the useful performance of mankind. But its greatest civilizing property will be, I believe, in aërial travel, which is sure to be brought about by means of it.

Telegraphic instruments will slowly enlighten the barbarian. Electric motors and lamps will do it more quickly, but quicker than anything else the flying-machine will do it. By rendering travel ideally easy it will be the best means for unifying the heterogeneous elements of humanity. As the first step toward this realization we should produce a lighter storage-battery or get more energy from coal.