ADDRESS. 174 
success, mainly owing to the costliness of the requisite sodium. As 
the cost of this metal chiefly determines the price of the aluminium, 
technical chemists have devoted their best energies to the perfection and 
simplification of methods for its production, and the success which has 
culminated in the admirable Castner process constitutes one of the most 
interesting of recent illustrations of the progress made in technical che- 
mistry, consequent upon the happy blending of chemical with mechanical 
science, through the labours of the chemical engineer. 
Those who, like myself, remember how, between forty and fifty years 
ago, a few grains of sodium and potassium were treasured up by the 
chemist, and used with parsimonious care in an occasional lecture- 
experiment, cannot tire of feasting their eyes on the stores of sodinm- 
ingots to be seen at Oldbury as the results of a rapidly and dexterously 
executed series of chemical and mechanical operations. 
The reduction which has been effected in the cost of production of 
aluminium through this and other processes, and which has certainly 
not yet reached its limit, can scarcely fail to lead to applications of the 
valuable chemical and physical properties of this metal so widespread 
as to render it as indispensable in industries and the purposes of daily 
life as those well-known metals which may be termed domestic, even 
although, and, indeed, for the very reason that, its association with many 
of these, in small proportion only, may suffice to enhance their valuable 
properties or to impart to them novel characteristics. 
The Swedish metallurgist, Wittenstrém, appears to have been the first 
to observe that the addition of small quantities of aluminium to fused 
steel and malleable iron had the effect of rendering them more fluid, 
and, by thus facilitating the escape of entangled gases, of ensuring the 
production of sound castings without any prejudicial effect upon the 
‘quality of the metal. The excellence of the so-called Mitis castings, 
produced in this way, appears thoroughly established, and the results 
of recent important experiments seem to be opening up a field for 
the extensive employment of aluminium in this direction, provided its 
cost becomes sufficiently reduced. The valuable scientific and practical 
experiments of W. J. Keep, James Riley, R. Hadfield, Stead, and other 
talented workers in this country and the United States, are rapidly 
extending our knowledge in regard to the real effects of aluminium upon 
steel, and their causes. Thus, it appears to be already established that 
the modifications in some of the physical properties of steel resulting 
from the addition of that metal, are not merely ascribable to its actual 
entrance into the composition of the steel, but are due, in part, to the 
distributed through the metal, and prejudicially affects its fluidity 
when melted. In the latter respect, therefore, the influence exerted by 
steel, appears to be quite analogous to that of phosphorus, silicium, or lead 
1890. c 
