The Future of Aluminium.

Te Aroha News, Volume XIV, Issue 2109, 7 June 1898, Page 3

The Future of Aluminium.

Aluminium, which itself possessesfa high degree of specific heat, does not readily absorb heat, and thus is not liable to the chief objection to iron buildings iD hot countries. But apart from light decorative purposes, such as balconies, cupolas, finials, and verandahs, it is as a roofing material that aluminium should be most welcome to the .builder. In plates or scales, two-thirds lighter than copper, uncorroded by air, and unditnmed even by the sulphur of London smoke, It should make a roof fit for a palace of romance. The humbler elements of health and comfort in the house, hardly less im portant than .fits external defences against the weather—pipes, cisterns, taps a'tfd gutters, now made of iron which rusts, or lead which poisons—would be more enduring and far more healthy if made of light and cleanly metal, which might also, take the place ;pf all water-holding vessels now-made of heavy brittle earthen ware or painted tin. An aluminium bath is among the probable luxuries of the next century. But it is not; as a mere accessory to comfort and convenience that the real development of. the new metal should lie. It is for use at sea that its most marked quality of lightness obviously fits it. The marine engineer and the naval | architect, who are already looking in this direction for a reduction in the weight which is inseparable from 1 ss of efficiency, whether in speed or cargo, cannot neglect the possibi i ies of a metal which, when mixed in the proportion of 1 to 50, gives the aluminum bronze a hardness and toughness which makes it almost as reliable as steel, and which, if the proportions could be reversed and the strength preserved, would reduce the weights of ships and machinery alike by twothirds. This is a problem which awaits the metallurgists for solution. The reduction in cost, judging by analogy, can only be a question of time and research.

The best steel now costs little more thau Is 2d per pound, while aluminium exists in far greater quantities than iron, is more widely distributed, and neither the limits of time nor the history of metallurgy forbid us to cour jecture that, as the world has se en its age of stone, its . age os bronze, and its age of iron, so it may before long have embarked on a new and even more prosperous era the age of alumini&m.