616 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



of the consumption by no small amount and the makers held 

 considerable stocks of the metal. At that time, the chief difficulty 

 confronting the manufacturer was that of marketing his wares 

 and in view of the hopes which had attended the inception of 

 the industry the outlook was sufficiently discouraging. How- 

 ever, the time at which the aluminium industry was at its lowest 

 ebb coincided very closely with the first strong impulse given to 

 the automobile trade which was destined to carry it into the 

 forefront of industrial undertakings. In the early days of self- 

 propelled road vehicles, as at a more recent date in the case of 

 aerial vehicles, every effort was made to lighten the burden 

 placed upon the weak engines which did duty as tractors and in 

 accomplishing this advantage was taken freely of the most salient 

 feature of aluminium, its extraordinary lightness. Wherever 

 possible, aluminium was used whether for engine parts or for 

 the coach work. In a very short time the aluminium makers, 

 who a few months before had been piling stock on stock, not 

 only found their accumulations absorbed but their factories 

 incapable of keeping pace with the rapidly growing demand. 

 The writer can recall days as recent as 1906 when anxious hours 

 were spent waiting for small consignments of a ton or two of 

 metal from the reduction works to keep the rolling mills going 

 and when every corner and cranny was searched for bits of old 

 scrap which could be remelted to feed the apparently insatiable 

 motor trade. 



Steps were at once taken to increase the capacity of the 

 reduction works and the extension of old and the installation 

 of new plant became the order of the day in two continents. 

 But the aluminium maker is wedded, for better or for worse 

 (probably the latter), to water power and as water power takes 

 anything from eighteen months to four years to install, the 

 automobile maker could not wait. Faced by the imperative 

 necessity of finding a substitute for aluminium, wherever the 

 latter could be dispensed with, he turned to thin steel sheets, 

 which he found not only far cheaper but also to his surprise not 

 markedly heavier. He had overlooked the fact that weight for 

 weight steel is stronger than aluminium, so that for many 

 purposes he was able to reduce the thickness of the metal used 

 to such an extent that no material increase in weight resulted. 

 Moreover, as engine power and efficiency were increased, 

 gradually dead weight began to be of less importance, a process 



