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Interior view of the Boeing plant at Seattle, Wash., showing the assembling room where planes are built under quantity production methods.

Beryllium, New Light Metal, Promises to Rival Aluminum (By Science Service)

Airship frames and light-weight pistons may soon be made from beryllium or its alloys, and this hitherto unknown metal may soon achieve the household familiarity that aluminum has won during the last two or three decades.

Beryllium is a metal about a third lighter than aluminum, but is very much harder, scratching glass easily, like hard steel. According to H.S. Cooper, industrial chemist of Cleveland, who has been conducting extensive experiments, it is one of the most remarkable of all metals in its elasticity. It is over four times as elastic as aluminum, and 25 per cent. more elastic than steel. And while aluminum corrodes easily on contact with salt water, beryllium shows very high resistance to this as well as to other metal destroying liquids and fumes. It is light gray in color, and takes a polish like that of high grade steel.

It is chemically related to aluminum, and one easily forms alloys with it. One of these consisting of 70 per cent. beryllium and 30 per cent. aluminum, is one-fifth lighter than aluminum, far more resistant to corrosion, and in tensile strength far exceeds duralumin.

One quality which Dr. Cooper points out may render beryllium especially valuable to the automobile industry. It expands under the influence of heat at about the same rate as cast iron. Thus when used for light pistons inside the iron cylinders of automobile engines it will present far less engineering difficulty than t=do the present types of light pistons, which expand at a rate different from that of iron.

Beryllium ores are found abundantly both in this country and abroad. At present they are hauled out of feldspar mines in New England by hundreds of tons, but are dumped away at waste. The commonest type of ore is known as beryl, polished crystals of which are sometimes worn as semi-precious stones.

Although so new industrially that it can not properly be said to have been born yet, scientifically beryllium is an old story. It has been known to chemists for 130 years; Vauquelin, a Frenchman, first indicated its existence in 1797. But until recently it has remained merely a museum curiosity and a laboratory material, because it is so refractory that the cost of getting it in anything like a pure state has been prohibitive. But now that the cost of manufacture promises to be materially reduced by a new electrolytic process, it is probable that it will appear on the market in quantity within a few years.