Metals in the Service of Man

[Nobody Special]

I recently picked up a copy of Metals in the Service of Man (Alexander and Street, 1958). There are more recent versions, but I didn't have $111 to spend on it, so I read the 1958 version. It's dated and the plot is a bit slow, but it's a surprisingly good read for a version of a book that's almost seventy years old. I wouldn't recommend it as the final word on metallurgy - for example it hadn't quite figured out titanium and talked about the open hearth process of producing steel as one of the contemporary leading methods. But for all that, it had a nice beat and you could dance to it.

The general descriptions of metallurgy worked, if they weren't quite complete, and there were lots of interesting tidbits on the physical properties of iron and alloys, plus occasional bits of trivia such as the influence of metal production on the German goals in WWII, or explaining how the metal nickel took its name from the word for devil (incidentally, pumpernickel literally means farting demon, because rye bread tends to lead to flatulence). I would love to read the 1998 version if the price ever comes down or I can get an inter-library loan, and it would well be worth a read to someone looking to learn about metallurgy in general, including iron and its alloys.

P.S. You may find yourself on some interesting internet side-trips, such as one I took to look up the production of steel needles, which was a lot cooler than it sounds and matched the book's description almost perfectly.

Alexander, W. & Street, A. (1958). Metals in the Service of Man. Pelican.

[Frosty]

Nickel eh?  Search . . . read . . . read. . . read. Ah, Old Nick but not for any devilish properties, more for being a metallic joker. Cool, thanks for the vocabulary update. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[Nobody Special]

Well, yes and no. Apparently, some of the copper ore they would pull out of the ground in Germanic deposits wouldn't reduce to metal no matter what they threw at it. Turns out it was mostly nickel and arsenic with a little copper for good measure. Supposedly some of them thought the ore to be cursed somehow by whatever you call the German version of tommyknockers. So both the ore, and the potential goblin were nickels and when they finally isolated the metal...

The needle bit was cool too. Oddly enough, they're not made singleton, but two at a time. The rod is cut, ground on both ends, then stamped in the middle, punched, broken apart, cleaned up, tumbled, sometimes finished in other metals or anodized or dipped in gold to make the eye stand out. Pins are similar, but apply molten glass. Like I said, took me a long-time taking side trips to watch videos on the open-hearth process, lead creep, needle making, the use of platinum leads in older style light bulbs to avoid breakage through different coefficients of expansion...you get the idea.

 

[Frosty]

That was interesting. Then I opened the video about making stainless steel tubing. It only looked marginally dangerous like any job handling lots of sheared sheet metal then it got to the part where one large roll of sheet SS had been sheared into LOTS of small rolls and the guy tack welds the free ends to the rolls without a welding shield. Audio was interesting, lots of machine and sheet metal sounds with chipmunks chittering in the background.

And who do we blame for this rabbit hole? Why . . . NOBODY of course.

It is a cool rabbit hole, thanks.

Frosty The Lucky.