The Olneyville Times

THE ALUMINUM AGE.

A Metal That May Revolutionize Ships
Building and Other Construction.

The world has had its ages of stone
and bronze.
We are now passing
through the iron age. Will this be suc-
ceeded by an age of aluminum? We
believe that it will. It taxes one's im-
agination a little, we confess, but not
one's credulity to see in the mind's eye
the bright and beautiful aluminum re-
placing black and ugly iron in most of
the latter's uses.

Fancy houses made of aluminum in-
stead of iron.
The weight of the new
metal is only a third as much as iron,
with equal or greater tensile strength.
The girders and the plates could be
cast and readily handled in sizes far
larger than those to which architectural
iron is now confined. Perhaps
whole fronts of modern-sized houses
could be moulded in a single piece.
This would greatly facilitate building
operations which are now slow.
Aluminum is as fire proof iron.
The larger the plates of the metal com-
posing the side of the house the less
liable they are to be warped and curled
by intense heat. A building with alu-
minum walls, such as we have de-
scribed, would survive a great confala-
gration in which iron structures of ex-
isting patterns would wither and crum-
ble to the ground. As aluminum never
rusts, a house constructed of it would
always exhibit a silvery, glistening
surface. It would require no cleaning,
except as smoke or dust might gradual-
ly dim its native beauty. A sponge
and water would bring all that back.

Whenever aluminum is cheap enough
for house building, steamships will be
made of it. This will be a revolution
in ocean commerce.
Hulls of alumin-
um ships will weigh only a third as
much as iron ones of equal tonnage.
They will be as strong and secure
against damage from collision as iron
vessels now are. Their far greater
buoyancy will be to that extent an in-
crease of safety.

Passenger cars made of aluminum in
light and graceful patterns-including
wheels of the same metal-need weigh
no more than wooden cars of our day,
and they would be incombustible, and
would not be readily crumpled up or
smashed into splinters by collisions.
The perils of railroad traveling in the
age of aluminum will be much less
than now.

The ductility of aluminum will ren-
der it the best of all possible materials
for bridges. The weight of the wire
ropes, as also of the bridge itself, for
a given span, being but one third that
of iron, engineers will perform feats of
bridge building now wholly beyond
their powers. The age of aluminum
will be the age of bridges. They will
probably be thrown over the East and
North rivers at intervals of every few
blocks.

With the sufficient cheapening of al-
uminum may come the realization of
the flying machine. One great obstacle
to the success of aerial navigation
is the difficulty of supplying a practical
motor either to propel or to steer the
balloon. The want is still more serious-
ly felt if the design is to dispense with
gas and imitate merely the movement
of a bird's wing or a fish's tail in cleav-
ing the air.

The small weight of an aluminum
engine, driven by compressed air, gas
or electricity, compared with its iron
equivalent, undoubtedly makes the ul-
timate success of air ships more prob-
able than before.

The sources of supply are inexhaust-
ible. Iron, copper, silver, gold are
found in localities geographically
small. But one of the most universal-
ly distributed materials of the earth
beneath our feet is clay, the metallic
base of which is aluminum. Having
boundless faith in the ingenuity of man
to overcome difficulties, we confidently
expect him to wrest this now stubborn
metal from its superabundant combi-
nations, and enable the world soon to en-
ter on an age of aluminum!-N. Y.
Journal of Commerce.