“HARD COPPER”

Evening Star, Issue 18807, 4 December 1924, Page 3

“HARD COPPER”

Tlic Stow that has "rediscovered ’’ a process of tempering or hardening copper, said to have been known to the ancients, crops up at irregular intervals. It has been appearing lately m the -American Tress, and is thus discussed in ‘ and Metallurgical Engineering’ (New \ork); , . . ■ We have had a number of inquiries regarding the authenticity or source of a story that has been given wide pubucitj in the Press during the past few weeks. Tho item with, its most ornamental frills removed ran usually like this . “The secret of hardening copper, lost 2,000 years ago with the passing of ancient Egyptian civilisation, has been found accidentally bv a railway switchman with an eighth-oracle education. The switchman, James Earl Cummings, thirty-three, with a wife and sis children between the ages of one and ten vears, to-day has a cheque tivelv slight hradening obtained bv cold for 1 500,000d0l paid him outright for his discovery by a big copper company in Detroit. He was broke a week ago. “Ho was cleaning the copper gaskets of his automobile, a. low-priced car of disreputable appearance, when lie stuck them into a mixture which he ‘figured would clean them best.’ The gaskets, he discovered, would spring back to their bent form when he tried to straighten them. “He told some of. the boys at the shop about it, and they said his fortune was made. He patented the device, demonstrated it before officials of the large Detroit Company, and received a. cheque for 1,500, COOdol.”" It is surprising how many readers give credence to such a fable without stopping to weigh tho probable monetary value of such a process, if there were such a process. To tho (indents even the comparatively slight hardening obtained by cold work or the addition of alloying metals was of great importance, but in these days of alloy steels a method cf making copper really 'hard would have only a limited commercial value on account of the high cost of tli© metal. If in addition .to giving copper hardness and great strength our switchman succeeded in doing a' few other things, such as retaining the high electrical conductivity, we should obtain a new material of great utility. Up to the time of going to press, however, this has been done only iu the imagination pi |he imaginative.