THE RISE OF NICKEL

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 141, 12 December 1939, Page 11

THE RISE OF NICKEL

As the fighting continues around Petsamo, in the far north of .Finland, the question arises whether one reason for the Soviet move into this territory is to be found in the fact that there is an important nickel development there, Russia supplies less than 2 per cent, of the world's production of nickel, of which about 90 per cent, comes from Canada. Nickel derives its name from the term applied to it by German miners who, searching for silver and copper, found an ore with which they could do nothing, and swearing that it was inhabited by a devil, called it '"kupfer-nickel," the "nickel" being derived from Nickolaus. or as we might say, "Old Nick." First established as an element by a Swede in 1745, nickel did not come into its own until after 1883 when the cutting of the -Canadian Pacific Railway revealed huge quantities of copper sulphate (nickel is always found in association with copper) and presented the problem of what to do with all this metal. The magnitude of the problem may be realised from the fact that the French colonial possessions which then were the chief source of supply today only yield about 6 per cent, of the world total. An endeavour was made to use nickel as an alloy with iron and steel, and though the German industrialist Krupp refused to adopt this suggestion, the success of the French in producing chromium-steel shells which ripped through armour-plate created a great demand for nickel-steel armour plate, and- led to Krupp attempting to buy the Canadian mines, but too late. Dr. Ludwig Mond by chance discovered a much more complete process of refining nickel by volatising the metal at high temperature and recovering it in solid form without having to reduce it to a molten state. This gave absolutely pure nickel for the first time.