ASBESTOS DRESSES

Greymouth Evening Star, 5 August 1929, Page 9

ASBESTOS DRESSES

SCIENTIST’S PREDICTION.. Twentieth century women need not be surprised at the use of fabrics they are called, upon to wear. The idea of dresses from trees would have been hooted at in another age; yet to-day the forests are the supply of bolts and bales of lustrous artificial silk, says the New York “Tinies.” Even the vegetable kingdom, too, may be pressed into service. Indeed, the mineral kingdom has served already. Processes employing minerals have been employed to give lustre and finish to vegetable fabrics; silver and gold have been sprayed upon the cloth. Now comes a Philadelphia professor who says rocks will be crushed to furnish dress material.

Professor Paul Q. Card, of the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science, predicts gowns of asbestos. They will be as lustrous as silk, he thinks, more durable than homespun, and much cheaper than any other material. The mineral is held to have al) the properties required for the making of an ideal fabric. When the fabric! appears it is predicted that women of all degrees will be pleased with it. It is said that the asbestos frock will wear well and clean, easily. A future of wider service is thus possibly in store for a mineral that nowadays is useful chiefly on account of its resistance to heat.

All of this sounds new, and yet asbestos cloth was made long ago by the Homans. They came across veins of asbestos fibres, similar in appearance to cotton and as fine as silk. Having discovered the valuable properties of asbestos, they mined it and wove it into fabrics, which were used mainly to make shrouds, to keep the ashes of the dead, in the process of cremation, from mingling with ithose of the byre. One such shroud, found in 1702 in an ancient sarcophagus, is displayed in the library of tlie Vatican. Tradition has it that Charlemagne had a tablecloth woven of asbestos, which, when soiled, was cleaned by throwing it into the fire. In 1676 a Chinese merchant displayed some asbestos 'handkerchiefs before the Royal Society of Great Britain calling them “salamander’s wool.” Fabric of asbestos was used in some of the sacred lamps of antiquity as unconsumable wicks, and as wicks, too, Eskimos in Labrador have used asbestos.

In the last century asbestos became one of the most valued of industrial materials. It came into importance after the steam engine, and in the sixties was employed as packing for steam glands, for insulating purposes, and for making fireproof papers. It was not until the end of the century, however, that it was extensively used. Since then -it has attained to numerous and ever-increasing industrial applications. It enters into practically every branch of trade and into laboratory work, surgery, medicine, and all manner of scientific research. To the building industry asbestos is most important. It gives strength and resistance to cements, plaster, and stucco. With portland eement it makes fireproof shingles and roofing. It covers pipes and boilers, and paper made from it lines floors, partitions, and weather boards. It is used for lining ovens and doors of stoves, in grates and furnaces, in fire screens, for packing wherever steam is used, for lining brakes, and for insulating. Theatre curtains are made of asbestos and so are table mats. It enters into roof paints qnd floor and wall tile. Already the future predicted for the material as dress goods has been suggested in clothing of a rough and strictly serviceable sort that has been manufactured for the protection of industrial workers.