Everyone knows that gold can'bo beaten out to exceeding thinness, but it is not generally known that by a difference in method the most fragile piece of gold leaf a gold-beater ever attained is made to appear as thick as a brick to a piece of paper. Electricity is the wizard that does the work. A copper sheet is gold-plated only until the gold color is just discernible; it is then put in nitric acid, which slowly dissolves the copper, and leaves the film of gold floating—and a sheet of glass acts as a landing net. The gold'film thus produced is so thin that if it were used for a book the ‘ Encyclopodmdia Rn’tannica 1 would go into the waistcoat poclcet, and a book of an inch thick would contain five and a-half million pages. In fact, 20,000 of these golden pages would only bo as thick as one of our pages. It certainly is a bit thin.
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Bibliographic details
Evening Star, Issue 18334, 23 July 1923, Page 5
Word Count
158Page 5 Advertisements Column 2 Evening Star, Issue 18334, 23 July 1923, Page 5
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