Coming Age of Aluminum

Doom of the Copper Industry Foreshadowed and Downfall of Iron.

Nikola Tesla in Century Magazine.

The coming age will be the age of aluminum. It is only seventy years since this wonderful metal was discovered by Woehler, and the aluminum industry, scarcely forty years old, commands already the attention of the entire world. Such rapid growth has not been recorded in the history of civilization before. Not long ago aluminum was sold at the fanciful price of $30 or $40 per pound; to-day it can be had in any desired amount for as many cents. What is more, the time is not far off when this price, too, will be considered fanciful, for great improvements are possible in the methods of its manufacture.

The absolutely unavoidable consequence of the advance of the aluminum industry will be the annihilation of the copper industry. They cannot exist and prosper together, and the latter is doomed beyond any hope of recovery. Even now it is cheaper to convey an electric current through aluminum wires than through copper wires; aluminum castings cost less, and in many domestic and other uses copper has no chance of successfully competing. A further material reduction of the price of aluminum cannot but be fatal to copper. But the progress of the former will not go on unchecked, for, as it ever happens in such cases, the larger industry will absorb the smaller one: the giant copper interests, and the slow-packing copper will reduce the lively gait of aluminum. This will only delay, not avoid, the impending catastrophe.

Aluminum, however, will not stop at downing copper. Before many years have passed it will be engaged in a fierce struggle with iron, and in the latter it will find an adversary not easy to conquer. The issue of the contest will largely depend on whether iron shall be indispensable in electric machinery. This the future alone can decide.

While it is impossible to tell when this industrial revolution will be consummated, there can be no doubt that the future belongs to aluminum, and that in times to come it will be the chief means of increasing human performance. It has in this respect capacities greater by far than those of any other metal. I should estimate its civilizing potency at fully one hundred times that of iron. This estimate, though it may astonish, is not at all exaggerated. First of all, we must remember that there is thirty times as much aluminum as iron in bulk available for the uses of man. This in itself offers great possibilities. Then, again, the new metal is much more easily workable, which adds to its value. In many of its properties it partakes of the character of a precious metal, which gives it additional worth. Its electric conductivity, which, for a given weight, is greater than that of any other metal, would be alone sufficient to make it one of the most important factors in future human progress. Its extreme lightness makes it far more easy to transport the objects manufactured. By virtue of this property it will revolutionize naval construction, and in facilitating transport and travel it will add enormously to the useful performance of mankind. But its greatest civilizing potency will be, I believe, in aerial travel, which is sure to be brought about by means of it. Telegraphic instruments will slowly enlighten the barbarian. Electric motors and lamps will do it more quickly, but quicker than anything else the flying machine will do it. By rendering travel ideally easy it will be the best means for unifying the heterogeneous elements of humanity.