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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



ite is given by E. G. Acheson in the 

 June issue of the Journal of the Frank- 

 lin Institute. In the year 1779 Karl 

 Wilhelm Scheele, a young apothecary in 

 the town of Koping, Sweden, discovered 

 that graphite was an individual com- 

 pound. It had up to this time been con- 

 founded with molybdenum sulphide. In 

 1800 Mackenzie definitely added graph- 

 ite to the carbon group by showing that, 

 on burning, it yielded the same amount 

 of carbon dioxide as an equal amount of 

 charcoal and diamond. Graphite in a 

 more or less pure state is quite freely 

 distributed over the earth, but only in 

 a few places is it found under condi- 

 tions of purity, quantity, ease of min- 

 ing, refining, and transportation to mar- 

 ket that permit of a profitable business 

 being made of it. Statistics for the last 

 six years (1890-'95) show an average 

 yearly production of 56,994 short tons. 

 The countries contributing to the sup- 

 ply were Austria, Ceylon, Germany, 

 Italy, United States, Canada, Japan, In- 

 dia, Russia, Great Britain, and Spain. 

 Great differences exist in the structure 

 and purity of the graphites furnished 

 from the various mines. There are two 

 general forms the crystalline and the 

 amorphous. The product of the Ceylon 

 mines is crystalline of great purity, ana- 

 lyzing in some cases over ninety-nine per 

 cent carbon, while that of the Barrow- 

 dale mines is amorphous and also very 

 pure. The chief impurity in graphite is 

 iron. It is probable that the first use 

 made of graphite was as a writing sub- 

 stance. The first account we have of its 

 employment for this purpose is con- 

 tained in the writings of Conrad Gess- 

 ner on Fossils, published in 1565. Its 

 present uses include the manufacture 

 of pencils, crucibles, stove-polish, foun- 

 dry-facing, paint, motor and dynamo 

 brushes, anti-friction compounds, elec- 

 trodes for electro-metallurgical work, 

 conducting surfaces in electrotyping, and 

 covering the surfaces of powder grains. 

 For most of these purposes it is used in 

 the natural impure state. The mining 

 and manufacture of graphite into arti- 

 cles of commerce give employment to 

 thousands of people. The mines of Cey- 

 lon alone, when working to their full ca- 

 pacity, employ about twenty-four thou- 

 sand men, women, and children. The 

 rapid increase in the use of graphite has 

 led to considerable discussion in recent 



years regarding the possibility of its 

 commercial manufacture. It has been 

 made in a number of different ways in 

 the laboratory, all, however, depending 

 on the same fundamental principle viz., 

 the liberation of the carbon from some 

 one of its chemical compounds, under 

 conditions which prevent its reassocia- 

 tion with the same or other elements. 

 Mr. Acheson, who has been working for 

 several years in an endeavor to devise a 

 commercially successful process of man- 

 ufacture, found, somewhere back in 1893, 

 that graphite was formed in the carbo- 

 rundum (electric) furnaces of the Car- 

 borundum Company of Niagara Falls. 

 Since then he has been following up this 

 clew, and now believes that " the only 

 commercial way to make graphite is by 

 breaking up a carbide by the action of 

 heat." A building for its manufacture 

 in this way, by the use of the electric 

 furnace, is now in course of erection at 

 Niagara Falls. 



Commercial Education in Eng- 

 land.* It is only of comparatively late 

 years that the Government has had any- 

 thing to do with the education of the 

 people. For some centuries back all 

 English education was practically con- 

 trolled by our two ancient universities 

 Oxford and Cambridge. They decided 

 what subjects were to be taught, and 

 how they were to be taught. The con- 

 trol they exercised over our English 

 schools was an indirect one, but it was 

 none the less effectual. The schools 

 themselves were, like the universities, 

 independent of Government, or, indeed, 

 of any control. The principal of these 

 are known as " public schools," though 

 the term " public " has of late years also 

 been applied to the public elementary 

 schools. These are nearly all develop- 

 ments of ancient foundations. Winches- 

 ter, founded in the fourteenth century, 

 and Westminster, in the sixteenth, grew 

 up under the shadows of great religious 

 houses; Eton was established in the fif- 

 teenth century by the monarch, close to 

 his own palace at Windsor; Harrow, 

 which dates from the sixteenth century, 

 is the most important example of the 

 most numerous class of all privately 



* From a paper read by Sir H T. Wood, at the 

 International Congress, on Technical Education, 

 at Venice, May, 1899. 



