ALLOY AGE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 26 January 1939, Page 4

ALLOY AGE

many uses for nickel. SUPPLIES FROM CANADA. TORONTO. The world today is passing through the Alloy A.ge, and nickel which a few hundred years ago was dubbed devilmetal or “kupfer-nickel” by German miners is becoming possibly the most extensively used of all alloys. It has been estimated that there are 8,200 separate alloys in use in the metallurgical industries, of which 2,300 contain nickel: Canada is the main source of supply for this metal which is finding its way into every day life throughout the world. As an instance of its many uses, the Queen Mary and her new sister ship, the Queen Elizabeth, have nickel in them from bow to propeller, and large quantities were used in the construction of the Empire State Building in New York and the Savoy Hotel in London. Nickel toughens the steel used in streamlined trains, automobiles, in hard rock drills, in steam shovels, in plow shares, in cutlery and in machinery in general. In the home, nickel is used in the manufacture of rust-proof tanks, in elegant kitchen sinks and in home appliances. In fact, nickel today is a metal used whenever strength and elegance is required. Canada supplies approximately 90 per cent of the nickel used in the world today, and it nearly all comes from the famous Sudbury Basin in Northern Ontario. There, close to the mine-head, stand two of the most famous smoke stacks of the world, belching smoke and fumes from the large refineries. One of these is credited with being the tallest smoke stack in the British Empire standing 554 feet high with an opening 40 feet wide. The other is not quite so high, but its opening is 45 feet wide, thus making it the largest stack in the Empire. A third stack .goes up 365 feet. From the Sudbury basin 103,850 tons of refined nickel was extracted in 1937, in addition to platinum, palladium, iridium, rhodium and ruthenium to the value of nearly 10,000,006 dollars, gold to the value of 2,000,000 dollars, silver worth 1,000,000 dollars and large quantities of copper. The Canadian industry, owned and operated by the International Nickel Company of Canada is jointly controlled by shareholders in Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States. Its holdings are international.