NICKEL AND ITS USES. 253 



It was many years after this, however, hefore the metal was 

 obtained in a state of purity and its properties satisfactorily de- 

 termined, and it was much later still when nickel, in a state of 

 comparative purity, became an article of commerce ; indeed, until 

 recently it was hardly known in the pure state outside of the 

 laboratory. In 1804 Richter experimented with this metal and 

 obtained it fairly pure by reducing the oxide with carbon in an 

 earthen crucible. Almost seventy years later, Wharton, of the 

 Camden Nickel Works, Camden, N. J., who has devoted so much 

 attention to the metallurgy of nickel, exhibited at the Vienna 

 Exposition vessels of pure forged nickel, which he made by 

 strongly compressing the spongy mass obtained by reduction of 

 the oxide. These exhibits at Vienna, and similar ones at Phila- 

 delphia in 1876, and at Paris in 1878, received but scant attention 

 from scientific visitors. Chemists and metallurgists, as a rule, 

 supposed they were nickel alloy, and were somewhat incredulous 

 when informed that the objects were pure nickel ; in fact, the 

 commercial production of pure nickel by Wharton, as evidenced 

 by these exhibits, was a genuine surprise to the metallurgical 

 world. 



A further advance in the metallurgy of nickel was made by 

 Fleitmann, of Iserlohn, Westphalia, in 1879. He found that the 

 purest nickel he could obtain on a commercial scale had a brittle- 

 ness which did not belong to the pure metal, and in the course of 

 investigation he was led to believe that the brittleness was caused 

 by occluded carbonic oxide. He decided to attempt the removal 

 of this by adding magnesium in minute quantity to the molten 

 nickel, and was successful beyond expectation, for the nickel thus 

 treated quickly loses its brittleness. 



As to the properties of nickel, it will suffice to say that it is a 

 hard silver-white metal with a steel-gray tinge ; it may be rolled 

 into thin plate or drawn into wire ; it is not readily oxidized ; it 

 is attracted by the magnet and readily assumes a polar condition. 



Turning now to consider the uses of this metal, we find that 

 Thenard in 1825, in his Traite" de Chimie, stated that nickel was 

 not employed for any practical purpose. This statement is true 

 only in reference to the pure metal ; for, just as brass was known 

 and used long before zinc was isolated, so nickel alloys were known 

 and used long before Cronstedt's discovery of the metal. The Chi- 

 nese appear to have been among the earliest users of nickel alloys, 

 for as early as 1776 it was pointed out that Chinese pachfong — i. e., 

 white copper — is an alloy of copper, zinc, and nickel. The begin- 

 ning of the manufacture of these alloys in Europe is due to a some- 

 what curious circumstance. In the old slags from disused copper- 

 smelting works at Suhl in Prussian Saxony, and once known as 

 the armory of Germany, white granules of metal were found. 



