Metallurgists in Manhattan

The name most frequently heard at the American Institute of Mining & Metallurgical Engineers convention in Manhattan last week was that of Charles Martin Hall who died in 1914. Reason: aluminum.

Although it is the most abundant metal in the earth's crust, aluminum was not isolated until a Dane named Oersted did so in 1825, by heating the chloride with potassium. Napoleon Ill's chemist, Deville, substituted sodium for potassium, got the price of aluminum down to $34, then to $17.

Charles Martin Hall was born in Thompson, Ohio to a Congregational clergyman in 1863. Charles, a handsome, bright-eyed lad, was fascinated by chemistry. One day at Oberlin College he heard his chemistry professor say that fortune awaited the man who found a way to make aluminum cheaply. The story is that Charles nudged his neighbor, whispered: "I'm going after that metal." He hit on the idea of finding a solvent for the oxide ore, bauxite, then electrolyzing the solution, sending oxygen to one electrode, pure aluminum to the other. After graduation he cooked indefatigably in his back yard, trying dozens of solvents in vain. His crucibles were shaky, his batteries uncertain. Finally he found that electrically melted cryolite, a mineral from Greenland, would dissolve the ore. Then he tried to electrolyze it. In clay crucibles it was no go. He substituted carbon crucibles. In the bottom he found a handful of gleaming aluminum pebbles. That was on Feb. 23, 1886. Charles was 22.

After two discouraging years he found in Pittsburgh a backer named Alfred E. Hunt. Together they started Pittsburgh Reduction Co.. which later became the Mellon-controlled Aluminum Co. of America. The first run in their crude little shop produced an aluminum ingot the size and shape of a pancake.

Hall was not a man to let the rewards of his invention slip through his fingers. He gave millions to Oberlin and other institutions, collected rare rugs, had a platoon of servants in his big house. Although he never drank, smoked or married, his health failed in his 40's and he died at 50 of a spleen disorder.

Last week on the 50th anniversary of his discovery the "crown jewels" of the aluminum industry were exhibited in an ornate casket--Hall's first pebbles and the pancake from Pittsburgh Reduction Co.'s first run.

Other topics discussed by the miners & metallurgists included:

Electrical Prospecting. Modern geophysical methods of locating minerals and napping subterranean structure are of two kinds: 1) using explosions to create artificial earthquake waves whose speed and character furnish clues (TIME, Nov. 4); 2) sending electric currents through the ground. The electrical method consists of shooting a current along a bare wire connecting two iron stakes. The current seems to spread far down into the ground, which thus becomes part of the circuit and varies the voltage received according to the resistance of the materials of which the subsurface is composed. This proved successful for locating oil and metals, but engineers regarded it as hopeless for finding anthracite. Dr. William Maurice Ewing & associates of Lehigh University reported last week that prior failures were apparently due to interference by mine motors. In the Lehigh tests around Mahanoy City, Pa. two previously unknown seams were successfully located by the electric method.

Surveyors for a nickel mine near Sudbury, Ont. looked for a place to sink a new shaft. There was quicksand in the ground which it was necessary to avoid. Electrical prospecting indicated at one point a distance of only 100 ft. to bedrock When the drill went down, Engineer Ham Lundberg of Montreal reported, bedrock was struck at precisely 100 ft.

Salt Lode. Glauber's salt is a natural sodium sulphate used in paper pulp and glass manufacturing. Lately in northwestern North Dakota a party of Federal relief workers discovered deposits containing 20,000,000 tons of Glauber's salt, worth about $350,000,000. A few manufacturers have already expressed themselves as ''highly interested" in exploiting the deposits.--Professor Irvin Lavine & Herman Feinstein, University of North Dakota.

Solar Navigator is the name of a new device designed to keep airplanes within one-fourth of a degree of a geometrically straight course, no matter how the wine is blowing, while making maps for mineral prospecting. It consists of a drift indicator combined with a sun compass, continuous true-course reading appearing on a dial on the instrument panel.--Leon Theodore Eliel, Fairchild Aerial Surveys.

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