USES OF ANTIMONY.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXI, Issue 65, 17 March 1900, Page 2 (Supplement)

USES OF ANTIMONY.

Antimony is chiefly valuable as an alloy with other metals. It is used to a large extent with lead in the mamifacture of type metal, to which it gives hardness, and, what is more valuable, it possesses the peculiarity when used as an alloy of expanding at the moment of solidifying, thus giving; to the type a clean sharp impression. From" 10 to 16 parts of antimony in 100 are used in making britannia metal. Pewter contains about 7 per cent. It is also used in the manufacture of babbitt metal, an auti-friction alloy used in the journals of railroad locomotives and cars and other rapidlymoving machinery. It has lately been used as an alloy with aluminium, to which it gives hardness and elasticity, its effects in some metals are very injurious, particularly copper, an almost inappreciable amount (one part in a thousand) destroying" its good qualities. The well known medicinal preparation, Tartar emetic, is a tartrate of antimony and potassium. The trisulphide is also used to some extent in medical practice. The sulphide was used to a considerable extent by the ancients as a pigment.