USES OF ASBESTOS.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXIV, Issue 1868, 3 February 1892, Page 4

USES OF ASBESTOS.

Sometimes it is not merely an article in tbe wrong place that is wrested from being a nuisance and converted into something useful, but a something which for generations has had no value iB suddenly endowed by the ingenuity of modern discovery int<j a variety of utilitarian objects. For thousands of years abestos has had no value. A few oriental monarchs amused their surprised gueßts by having napkinß woven out of its fibre, which were thrown into the fire to be cleaned. Its Greek name expresses this inconsummability. But within the last 20 years asbestos has assumed a wide usefulness, and the finder of a new seam of asbestos would do better than the discoverer of a gold mine. Most of us are only acquainted with this mineral in connection with our modern gas stoves, but it has a host of applications besides lamp wicks, boiler packing, moom bustible f cl t rop es, mill boards, stoppers for our huge guns, time fuses, charge preservers for torpedo and dynamite shells, coating fur ironclads, cloth for balloons, safety coverings for roofs and floors (commonly adopted in America), curtains and other properties for theatres, movable shields for preventing the advance of fire, clothing for firemen, filters, pipe joints, furnace lining, insulators, lamp shades, tobacco pipes, soles for lining boots and shoes, soldering blocks for watchmakers, moulds for type writing, each and all of these multitudinous object 8 and operations are administered to by asbestos. The latest are an asbestos paper and compound tobacco mixture for cigarettes. Artificial asbestos can be made out of useless clay by steam-blowing the molten mass into thin hairs, resembling floss silk. Asbestos natural and artificial, is capable of still further application, and perhaps the artificial kind is yet in its infancy. Waste only exists where ignorance exists. " For nought so vile upon the earth doth live, but to the earth some special good doth give."