cal works at La Glacière, near Paris. It soon followed that the price of aluminium was reduced from 1000 fr. per kilo to 300 fr. After a short time the undertaking was enlarged, and the manufacture removed to Nanterre and Salindres. The last named works, under the management of Usiglio, went into the possession of Merle. New advances made a further reduction in price to 200 fr. possible. In 1862 the price was put down to 130 fr. Another works was then established at Amfreville, near Rouen. This was on a larger scale than that at Nanterre, for while in 1859 the latter produced 60 kilos, the former produced 80. In England the first manufactory was established in 1859, at Battersea, London; and the next year Bell Bros. started at Newcastle-on-Tyne. Germany as yet possesses no aluminium works."

The further we get away from an age the better able are we to write the true history of that age. And so, as years pass since the labors of Wöhler, Deville, and Tissier, we are now able to see better the whole connected history of the development of this art. Dr. Clemens Winckler gives us a comprehensive retrospect of the field seen from the standpoint of 1879, from which we condense the following:* The history of the art of working in aluminium is a very short one, so short that the present generation, with which it is contemporary, is in

* Industrie Blätter, 1879; Sci. Am. Suppl., Sept. 6, 1879.

danger of overlooking it altogether. The three international exhibitions which have been held in Paris since aluminium first began to be made on a commercial scale form so many memorials of its career, giving, as they did, at almost equal intervals, evidence of the progress made in its application. In 1855, we meet for the first time, in the Palais de l'Industrie, with a large bar of the wonderful metal, docketed with the extravagant name of the "silver from clay." In 1867 we meet with it again, worked up in various forms, and get a view of the many difficulties which had to be overcome in producing it on a large scale, purifying, and moulding it. We find it present as sheets, wire, foil, or worked-up goods, polished, engraved, and soldered, and see for the first time its most important alloy-aluminium bronze. After a lapse of almost another dozen years we see at the Paris exhibition of 1878 the maturity of the industry. We have passed out of the epoch in which the metal was worked up in single specimens, showing only the future capabilities of the metal, and we see it accepted as a current manufacture, having a regular supply and demand and being in some regards commercially complete. The despair which has been indulged in as to the future of the metal is thus seen to have been premature. The manufacture of aluminium and goods made of it has certainly not taken the extension at first hoped for in its behalf; the lowest limit of the cost of

manufacture was soon reached, and aluminium remains as a metal won by expensive operations from the cheapest of raw materials.

To France is due the merit of having been the first country to carry out Wöhler's process on a practical scale, and to have created the aluminium industry. France seems to be the only country in which the industry is able to prosper. The English establishment at Newcastle-on-Tyne by Bell & Co. did not succeed, and has been shut up now for about five years. The German manufactory, set up in Berlin by Wirz & Co., cannot be said really to have lived at all; it drooped before it was well started. In France, the great chemical works of H. Merle & Co., Salindres, carries on the extraction of aluminium, and the Société Anonyme de l'Aluminium, at Nanterre, works up the metal. Both firms were represented at the exhibition in 1878.

The most rational use indicated for aluminium by reason of its low specific gravity is the making of beams for balances. Sartorius, of Göttingen, was the first to make these light and unalterable beams of an alloy of 96 aluminium and 4 silver. He has had but few imitators. There are several reasons why the metal is shown so little favor by mathematical instrument makers and others. First of all, there is the price; then the methods of working it are not everywhere known; and further, no one knows how to cast it. Molten aluminium attacks the common earthen crucible, reduces silicon

from it, and becomes gray and brittle. This inconvenience is overcome by using lime crucibles, or by lining an earthen crucible with carbon or strongly burnt cryolite clay. If any one would take up the casting of aluminium and bring it into vogue as a current industrial operation, there is no doubt that the metal would be more freely used in the finer branches of practical mechanics. The prices per kilo quoted in the last list issued by the Société Anonyme are as follows:

ALUMINIUM BRONZE (10 per cent. aluminium).

The preceding paper of Dr. Winckler, as he remarks, chronicles the perfection of Deville's processes, when aluminium was made as cheaply as it could possibly be by these methods. But, about this time an aluminium works was started in Birmingham, England, by Mr. Webster, which has grown to be one of the largest in the world. Mr. Webster owns several patents on processes of his own, which will be found described in their proper places.

In the United States one of the most prominent

chemists engaged on aluminium is Colonel William Frishmuth, of Philadelphia. The following article gives an account of his invention:* "Some months ago, we published in the 'Star' the fact that Colonel William Frishmuth, well known in this city for many years, has discovered a method for producing aluminium at reduced cost. Comments were made in various quarters as to the real value of the discovery, some of which even questioned the possibility of producing the metal by this process, which is stated to produce it from South Carolina corundum, using sodium as a reagent. Meanwhile patents have been taken out in this and foreign countries, and preliminaries are fairly under way to test the process practically. It did not seem too much to hope when the publication was made that American capitalists would at once make investigation of Colonel Frishmuth's discovery, learn whether the results were even measurably up to the promise, and in that event secure to themselves a commercial plant so extremely important. It has, however, fallen to capitalists abroad to obtain control of the patent. At the present time Major Ricarde-Seaver, F.R.S.E., late Government Inspector of Mines, London, is in this eity as an expert to examine the process and its practicability on behalf of these capitalists. A reporter endeavored to obtain from Major Seaver his opinion of the process, but he

* Philadelphia Evening Star, November 15, 1884.