Tesla's View on Uses of Aluminum

Nicola [sic] Tesla Believes It Will Supersede All Other Metals

In a contribution to the Century Magazine, Nicola [sic] Tesla writes interestingly on the present and future uses of aluminum. Tesla is something of a brilliant theorist in his line, much as the Frenchman Flammarion is in the line of astronomy. Yet Tesla has accomplished some wonderful things, and his opinions are deserving of attention when he speaks on subjects connected with electricity.

Tesla believes that just as we have had an age of stone, an age of brass, an age of iron and an age of steel - not to speak of a golden age - the coming century will usher us in an age of aluminum. When we consider that it is only seventy years since this wonderful metal was first discovered and that the aluminum industry is scarcely forty years old, it must certainly be admitted that wonderful progress has already been made.

One conclusion arrived at by Tesla which will be welcomed by electric companies, and will be quite otherwise regarded by those interested in copper mining, is that the advance of the aluminum industry will result in the annihilation of the copper industry - that they cannot exist and prosper together. 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 to successfully compete. A further material reduction of the price of aluminum cannot but be fatal to copper. Tesla believes that the big copper companies, foreseeing this result, will endeavor to absorb the aluminum industry.

With a metal that is so widely distributed over the world this, however, would be no easy job. Tesla even goes farther than this and claims that before many years aluminum will run iron very close. The possibilities of this metal are indeed wonderful. There is said to be thirty times as much aluminum as iron in bulk available for the use of man. Among other things aluminum may revolutionize naval construction and will make aerial travel a possibility.