596 AX ST UAL. REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1921. 



States; that every progressive community in the country has its 

 annual " Clean-Up — Paint-Up Week " ; and that even the village 

 church has its pipe organ; the thought immediately occurs that surely 

 there is no other metal as useful as lead. As a matter of fact, how- 

 ever, if the quantities annually consumed are taken as an indication, 

 lead is outranked in usefulness by iron and steel and copper, but in 

 diversity of utility only by iron and steel. 



The benefits enjoyed by the millions of people in this country 

 through the use of lead and its compounds are made possible through 

 the efforts of some 60,000 individuals engaged in the lead industry, 

 and an endeavor is made in the pages following to tell briefly of 

 their work. 



There is a leaden figure in the British Museum which was taken 

 from the Temple of Osiris, at Abydos, one of the most ancient cities 

 of Upper Egypt. The temple is believed to have been built prior 

 to 3800 B. C.j so that the leaden figure is approximately 5,700 years 

 old. This is the only evidence of the early use of lead until several 

 thousand years later, but inasmuch as lead is so closely allied in 

 nature with silver and is a necessary factor in the production of 

 silver, the inference may be drawn that lead was known prior to any 

 direct evidence of the metal. Thus, the earliest known Egyptian 

 silver is believed to be a string of beads of the period of the twelfth 

 dynasty, 2400 B. C. There are records to show that lead was reduced 

 from its ores by smelting prior to 2000 B. C. ; lead was amongst 

 the spoils captured by Thothmes III in 1500 B. C. ; and white lead 

 was made by corroding metallic lead with vinegar about 300 B. C. 

 Strabo, about the beginning of the Christian era, mentions the use 

 of high stacks to carry off lead fumes, which statement would im- 

 ply that progress had been made in the metallurgy of lead and that 

 furnaces equipped with bellows had replaced the crude hearth. 



Again, there are a number of old Roman lead weights for balance 

 scales in the National Museum at Washington dating from early in 

 the Christian era, and the instances of the unearthing of ancient 

 lead water pipes in various parts of Europe are numerous. 



While facts to visualize still further the history of lead since the 

 Christian era might be presented, the evidence already given indi- 

 cates the gradual increase in importance of lead and therefore the 

 gradual development of a lead industry. 



At the beginning of the nineteenth century the bulk of the world's 

 lead came from England and Spain, the industry in each of these 

 countries having been started by the Romans; England supplied 

 two-thirds annually and Spain one-third. Germany, Austria, Hun- 

 gary, France, Russia, and the United States began to rank as pro- 



