A RADIO FURNACE

Radio Record, Volume I, Issue 43, 11 May 1928, Page 13

A RADIO FURNACE

NEW ELECTRICAL MARVEL.

The secrets of the mysterious forces of electricity are now being applied In many ways, especialiy in the world of industry, and equally as marvellous. The magicians of science recently per. fected a method of melting steel to a glowing red-white and molten state within a wooden box with radio. Scientists to whom this achievement is due are satisficd that the powers and wonders of electricity are only beginning to be understood. ‘They visualise the time when great power: plants ih different parts of the country will rady ate their power by wireless to be picked up in shops, factories and houses, wherever it is wanted, and they believe that this will be realized within a few years, The method of melting steel by ‘dio was discovered in a workshop in Sheffield, Ingland.Por more than two centuries iron and steel have been melted in pots called ‘‘erucibles’" by heating them in cecal, coke and gas furnaces. Tt has been a hot, hard and Jong job, takin: three. four and five hours to melt a pot containing sixty pounds of metal. The metal in its making, has picked up meny impurities from the coke and gas, and the steel has never been pertect. Eleciricity has solved the problem. Quick and Simple Method. The wireless furnace corsists of a wooden box, standing on a_ tilting frame in a clean, cool room. — Inside the mystery box is a pot that holds four hundred and fifty pounds: of steel The pot is surrounded by an inch or two of sand, ontside this sand is 1 brass or copper coil of piping, with water running through it, and the whole is enclosed in a wooden frame which makes the box abeut four feet scnare. Tlectricity is switched on to the coil, then a sharp staceato crackling starts . within the pot, and the steel, although there is no connection hetween it and the coil, becomes a faint red, then white, and slowly turns, within half an hour, to liquid In another twenty minutes it is in a white-hot molten state, ready to be poured into insot moulds. One great advantage is that the metal is free from sulphur and , phosphorus.