1062 Transactions of the American Institute. 



Veil known plates are made for engraving, but the difficulty is that 

 plates of deposited copper are very soft. Now, there is no reason why 

 duplicates cannot be made of nickel which will wear as lono- as steel 

 and be much less liable to injury, and free from corrosion. He M^as 

 sorry he could not state the means by which Dr. Adams obtains these 

 results, as his memory was not sufficient to carry all the details of his 

 process. All that he could say was that the process was exceedingly 

 simple, the preparation of the solution can be made in various ways. 

 The process is not patented yet. He believed it was the sulphate or 

 the chloride of nickel which was used in the solution. He had seen 

 specimens of knives plated with nickel which had been in use about 

 three months and they appeared the same as silver knives would be 

 worn. ^ The ordinary silvering of knives is very thin, and lasts only a 

 short time. For the same thickness nickel would last much longer, 

 and not be liable to corrosion. It has been assumed that in order to 

 deposit nickel, a very pure solution must be had, but this is not so ; 

 the specimens shown here were plated with nickel, not over seventy- 

 five per cent of nickel, and the deposition was thrown down at some 

 ninety per cent. 



Dr. L. Bradley remarked that the nickel on the knife shown 

 exhibited a tendency to peal off. 



Mr. Smith said that was on account of the knife not being cleaned 

 before plating ; silver would do the same. If properly cleaned, the 

 nickel would adhere the same as any other metal. Copper can be 

 deposited better than any other metal. Nickel stands in the same rela- 

 tion to plating that silver does to copper in the electro-plating process. 

 Dr. Isaac- Adams' address is No. 8, Boylston street, Boston. He 

 was the first to deposit nickel on plates that could be used in the 

 first process. Nickel, we know, is much cheaper than silver, and the 

 deposition of it costs about the same as silver. 



Aktificial Stone. 

 Mr. Thomas Hodgeson, No. 7, Beach place, ' Brooklyn, exhibited- 

 his process for making artificial stone. He had four patents for 

 making artificial stone of various kinds. He used the oxalate of 

 lime, mixed with sulphuric acid and sand. These he placed in a 

 mould without any lubrication, and in a few minutes it was taken out 

 ready to be dried ; after wliich it is placed in a solution of oxalic 

 acid, and there it indurates. He had exposed this stone to all 

 varieties of weather, without being the least affected by it. 



