I STORY OF PLATINUM
Testing Thermometers Is Part of Platinum’s Job.
Platinum Has Many Uses in Modern
Science, Industry and Warfare
Prepared by National Geographic Society,
Washington. D. C.—WNU Service.
IF YOU were to ask a bride
what her platinum wed
ding ring has in common
with armament races, she
probably would stare at you
in bewilderment.
Yet the same metal that
goes into her marital badge
also is an important element
in the manufacture of muni
tions. It serves the arma
ment maker in fine fuse wire
for torpedoes and shells; in
directly, it acts as chemical
agent in the production of
nitric and sulphuric acids,
used together in making ex
plosives.
A seldom-told tale of the World
war concerns a dangerous and diffi
cult mission of a young American
engineer in Russia, who. Just before
the United States entered the con
flict in 1917, undertook to transport
nearly a ton of platinum from Pet
rograd (now Leningrad) to Wash
ington.
Crossing the Atlantic was too un
certain. So, armed with a courier’s
pass, he set out, with his boxes of
treasure marked “embassy docu
ments,” to make the long trek
across Siberia to Vladivostok and
thence over the Pacific.
With travel complicated by the
Russian revolution, he outwitted se
cret agents and bandit raids. Time
and again he met peril, delay, and
disappointment as he rode in trains
Jammed with fretting, sweating hu
manity. But the platinum came
through!
Several nations have considered
platinum coinage, made patterns
and trial pieces, and then aban
doned the scheme.
Once Called “Unripe Gold.”
Valuable as platinum is now con
sidered, its practical career has
been brief.
"Unripe gold,” Colombian Indians
once called it. Prospecting for gold,
they used to toss white grains of
platinum back into the rivers—“to
ripen” into the yellow metall
In Tsarist Russia, over a century
ago, a silversmith was hanged be
cause he substituted platinum for
silver.
People now living can remember
when platinum jewelry was a nov
elty. Long before platinum was
used in legitimate coinage, this
metal was circulated as money—but
gilded and in counterfeit of gold.
“Throw it into the sea. Bury
it,” fumed the Spanish government
when racketeers of the day began
palming off the new white substance
from South America for good gold
doubloons.
only recently, thererore, has plat
inum come into wide use. In verse
and fiction it is the gold rush or
silver bonanza that grips imagina
tion. Few realize that platinum,
too, lures men to drag tropical riv
ers and thaw frozen northlands,
and, still more provocative, to con
jure it genielike, out of intricate
chemical processes.
It was the man in the laboratory
who put platinum on the world’s
economic map.
Remembering the excitement
that swept San Francisco when
gold was discovered and the sensa
tion of the Comstock Silver Lode,
the arrival in England of the first
crude Colombian platinum, in 1741,
may seem a little dull.
Not so to chemists and physicists
*of the time. Quietly they set to
work deciphering the mysteries of
this stuff that one of them called
“white gold, or the seventh metal.”
It was not an entirely unknown
quantity. Back in the Sixteenth
century a queer infusible metal had
ibeen observed in Mexico and what
is now Panama. Later Don An
tonio de Ulloa had mentioned plati
na (little silver), described in his
account of South American adven
tures as "a stone of such resistance
that it cannot easily be broken by a
blow on a steel anvil.”
Its resistance to scientific anal
ysis was also great. Years parsed
before it was learned that platinum,
like other metals, could be melted
if made hot enough.
In the Eighteenth century some
one rolled a bit of the metal into
foil and drew it into wire—a great
feat then, and the first faltering
step toward present-day achieve
ment, when one troy ounce of plati
num can be stretched into a virtu
ally invisible wire nearly 11,000
miles long, enough to go nearly half
way around the earth at the Equa
tor.
Frenchman Found Way to Work It
The first crude platinum crucible
appeared, pointing to its wide use
for the laboratory. But it was late
in the 1700’s before they knew how
to make a workable solid-platinum
ingot, a necessary preliminary tc
the widespread modern industry.
The first bar is credited to Cha
baneau, French chemist working for
Charles III of Spain, who received
a patent for his discovery in 1783.
Chabaneau’s biographer says that
the king himself, a dabbler in sci
ence, used to visit the scientist’s
workshop and help with experi
ments. Once Chabaneau in a rage
at the apparent inconsistency of
platinum ore, threw precious solu
tions, apparatus and all out of the
window, vowing never to touch the
stuff again.
Finally, however, successl And
to demonstrate the amazing weight
of this metal in pure form, he
played a little Joke.
Placing the shiny four-inch cube
on a table, he asked a friend to
raise it. The man could not. "You
have fastened it down," he said. But
Chabaneau lifted it—a weight of
about 50 pounds.
Chabaneau's friend would have
been still more astonished could he
have followed the career of this
metal into the future.
For platinum itself, science was
to discover, does not stand alone.
It belongs to a family of six allied
metals, each with its own peculiar
and valuable properties for art and
industry. It was platinum’s com
bination with these other metals
that caused the "inconsistencies”
which upset Chabaneau's calcula
tions.
Other chemists, too, found experi
ments contradictory. Sometimes
the platinum substance would be
come strangely brittle; again, to
their surprise, it would "burn" (de
pending, as we know now, on how
it was alloyed).
At last, however, the group stood
clear. And as palladium, rhodium,
osmium, iridium, and ruthenium
appeared in addition to platinum,
like rabbits out of the empty hat
of a vaudeville magician, infant in
dustries reached for the shining
boon.
Plays Vital Part In Industry
Fifty years ago, we had no radio
communication, no X-ray, no trans
continental or oceanic telephone, to
name but a few man-made miracles
in which the platinum metals play
a small but vital part.
In airplanes now platinum is
standard contact metal for high-ten
sion magnetos.
Fountain pens became practical
when an alloy of two of the platinum
group was found to make a wear
and acid-resisting point.
A farmer who may be indiffer
ent to platinum bracelets can still
appreciate platinum’s agency as a
catalyst in making synthetic ni
trates for fertilizer.
In your electric refrigerator and
thermostat heat-control unit a thin
strip of metal changes shape as
temperature rises or falls, making
or breaking electrical contact and
thus starting or shutting off the
motor. Since platinum offers high
resistance to hot electric sparks, it
is particularly useful here for con
tact points.
From obsolete telephone equip
ment thousands of ounces of plati
num, palladium and gold are sal
vaged annually—minute quantities
from each piece. After the metal
has be^n put through special proc
esses, back into service it goes in
the form of more contact points.
Platinum and palladium are impor
tant factors in radio and long-dis
tance telephony.
Dentists use a large proportion of
our annual supply in alloys for
bridgework, foil, and fillings. And
when you are sick the doctor may
puncture you with an iridio-f'a'.i
num-tipped hypodermic needle.
War surgeons find many practical
uses for these metals. One World
war flyer has 17 bone replacements
of platinum.
Washington.—There is no dis
counting the Jubilation in New Deal
circles over the present status of
the TVA investigation by a special
congressional committee. It is true
that a very loyal supporter of Pres
ident Roosevelt, Sen. George L. Ber
ry of Tennessee, has been more or
less thrown to the wolves. That is
regarded as too bad, of course, for,
as is evident in several other South
ern states, notably Georgia, South
Carolina and Texas, it is not as sim
ple as picking daisies to replace
stubborn independent Southern sen
ators with men who see eye to eye
with the President on economic is
sues.
But so far that is the only loss the
New Deal has sustained, whereas
the effect of the first few days of the
investigation has been to offset, to
at least a small degree, the unfa
vorable public reaction which came
when the President "fired” Dr. Ar
thur E. Morgan, chairman of the
TVA.
No one familiar with the TVA
situation has actually changed his
views as a result of anything so far
disclosed or likely to be brought out
prior to exhaustive inquiry. The
people who thought Arthur Morgan
right still think he was right. The
people who disapproved of David E.
Lilienthal’s proceedings still disap
prove of them.
But the important thing that has
happened is that the first salvos of
the two sides have been fired, and,
from a publicity standpoint, the Lil
ienthal side came out with less dam
age. General feeling in Washing
ton is that the public, and the news
paper editors, were disappointed at
the lack of fire in Arthur Morgan’s
attack, at his unwillingness to call
names and use epithets which would
make good headlines.
Morgan’s carefully prepared case,
the general impression here is, is not
calculated to fire the man in the
street with a desire to take a club
to Lilienthal. It is not even calcu
lated to make the "milkman in
Omaha” read through it. Quite the
contrary. If any candidate for the
Presidency could be assured of the
votes of every man and woman who
did not wade through Dr. Morgan’s
attack, he would not even lose
Maine and Vermont.
Morgan Is Mild
This might be true in any event,
no matter what Dr. Morgan had
said in his first appearance before
the committee. But far more im
portant was that he did not use any
language which would make a real
fighting headline, which the man in
the street would read. There is a
general feeling, even among Dr.
Morgan’s warmest supporters in
congress, that he has fired most of
his ammunition, that what is to
come is detail, and that the news
papers would not have printed as
much of his first statement as they
did had it not been for the marvel
ous advance notices, notably in the
sensational refusal of Arthur Mor
gan to present his full case to the
President.
The general impression, also, is
that Lilienthal is so much cleverer
than Morgan at this business of
presenting his case, either to an in
vestigating committee or to the pub
lic, that there Is little expectancy
that in the general fighting to come
Arthur Morgan will have much
chance.
The one episode that was expect
ed to inflame the public was the at
tempt of Senator Berry to collect a
few millions from the government
on his marble claims. This is now
bogged down to a contest as to
whether Arthur Morgan or Lilien
thal showed better judgment in his
plans to protect the government.
Lilienthal, it is thought, deliberate
ly abandoned any thought of pro
tecting Berry’s reputation, despite
the fact that the Tennessee senator
is now engaged in a primary fight.
Best opinion on that is that the
President agreed with Lilienthal the
sacrifice was necessary.
Stiffer Taxes Coining
Much stifler taxes next year are
a certainty. This is true despite
some very misleading inferences
' made recently because budget pre
dictions were shown to be not very
far wrong. What was omitted, and
what made these stories misleading,
; was that the budget forecasts were
i that the deficit would be large. They
I happened to be right.
But not even the most enthusiastic
New Dealer denies that taxes must
be increased by congress in the
next session. The New Dealers will
give varying explanations, most im
portant of which is an attack on
congress for too drastically modify
i ing the tax on undistributed corpo
i ration earnings and the capital
! gains tax.
i Actually two factors are both far
more important than this one. One
is that the corporation and personal
income tax returns to be made next
March will be tremendously short
of those which were made last
March. The Treasury is fully aware
: of this situation. Nothing that could
1 conceivably happen between now
and the end of the present calendar
year could change this result.
The point is that 1937 earnings
of corporations, and 1937 private in
comes, were excellent for the first
nine months of the year, that is, ex- j
ceilent compared with anything
since 1929. But in the last three I
months of 1937 the falling off be
came sharply manifest. Despite !
this obvious fact, there is a certain j
momentum attached to any such
movement which delays its full ef
fect for a time. As for instance, the
fact that many corporations, badly
hit in the 1929 situation, continued
to pay dividends through 1930 and
some of them into 1931. though even
tually they were forced to discon
tinue.
Incomes Reduced
Reduction of dividend and bond
coupon payments at the present
time hits the income tax returns to
follow much harder than was the
case in 1929 and through to 1933.
At that time the Treasury did not
tax normal individual income rates
on dividends. It was assumed, up
until a later tax bill, that the Brit
ish system, holding that the corpo
ration income tax had covered the
“normal” individual income tax on
dividends, was fair.
There is another important point
to be remembered in estimating tax
receipts. If a rich man’s stock fails
to pay $100,000 of expected divi
dends, because the corporation in
question did not earn the money,
then the Treasury loses more than
three-quarters of the money. The
government fails to collect the cor
poration income tax, which was 15
per cent, and is now, under the
new bill, 18 per cent.
But then the whole amount is sub
ject to the top bracket of that rich
man’s income. So when a corpora
tion’s income declines, as far as the
Treasury is concerned the depres
sion skims off the cream, leaving
only skimmed milk.
The other factor in the certainty
that taxes must be increased is that
virtually everything that is waiting
for action by the federal govern
ment contemplates greater spend
ing, not smaller. This is true of
the navy, of the army, of the mer
chant marine, of trust busting plans,
and of social security.
Even the attempt at ear marking
the relief appropriation was not an
economy move, but merely one to
prevent the administration from
withholding pork from individuals in
the house and senate that it wished
to punish.
F. D. R. Still Strong
Planned economy of business,
with close government supervision
of production and competition on
much the same pattern as Secre
tary Henry A. Wallace is now regu
lating agriculture, will be pressed
strongly by left wingers as the next
step toward “recovery.” President
Roosevelt is disposed to go along
with them, though questioning the
political expediency of such a move
on the eve of the congressional elec
tions.
Right wing advisers hope that vic
tory for the wage-hour bill may dis
suade him, but more economic plan
ning is the prospect at the tag end
of a session in which the President
was turned down on government re
organization and his favorite tax
theories, with an indication of more
independence in congress and more
turning-to-the-right by the govern
ment in spite of Roosevelt’s person
al views. It is the prospect be
cause of utter failure of pump-prim
ing and credit inflation to give busi
ness and employment the lift that
the left wingers predicted. It is
the prospect also because, despite
the failure of the Roosevelt recov
ery measure and despite the desire
for independence on Capitol Hill,
various tests show that Roosevelt
still stands strong with the voters—
that he has the power to defeat, if
not the power to elect.
Conservative independents on Cap
itol Hill are distinctly worried by
numerous developments, hence are
not only afraid themselves but are
gaining few recruits. Florida nom
inated a New Dealer and a Town
send plan advocate over an inde
pendent conservative. Florida in a
run-off election proceeds to nomi
nate a Townsendite and a New Deal
er for the seat in the house which
that independent conservative now
occupies. Oregon Democrats beat
a sitting governor for renomination
largely because he had insisted on
preserving order in labor disputes.
Faces Bad Situation
Washington faces the unprece
dented situation of a bad depression
and increasing unemployment ac
tually helping the administration in
power, instead of crushing it as has
invariably been the case in this
country’s political history. Congress
construes the various votes and
polls as a mandate to the Presi
dent to proceed with economic ex
perimentation. The only question
is whether the President will “press
his luck” and go forward with plans
he has long contemplated and ap
proved. These include plans to
avoid increasing capacity to the
point where profits are turned into
“additions to plant which are now
standing stark and idle” ns he said
in his 1932 acceptance speech. Also
plans to prevent unfair competition,
monopolistic methods in business,
collusion to produce identic bids on
contracts, movements of plant to
reach cheaper labor for exploita
tion. In short, plans to attain the
ideal of planned economy with no
depression, no booms, no underpriv
ileged, no speculative profits of any
kind, and very small profits for all
business units.
© Bell Syndicate.—WNU Service.
Secrets of Ancients Survive
Attacks of Modern Science
With television soon to become
serious rival to the movies, and
giant airplanes and “press-the
button” warships things which
raise little comment from the av
erage man, it is surprising that
there are many secrets known to
the ancients which have survived
the attacks of modern science,
says a writer in London Answers.
The Greeks eould not weave lin
en or wool on anything like the
scale we weave them today. But
they wove them into the pilema,
a form of cuirass which could not
be penetrated by the sharpest dart
or arrow. The secret has been
lost—perhaps forever.
The Romans sank wells for wa
ter to great depths. Exactly how
they did the boring is unknown.
The beautiful purple dye, known
of old, has eluded the dye-makers
of today. And modern builders
can make nothing of the strong
and durable cement used by the
Greeks and the Romans in their
walls. This cement was stronger
and harder than the stone itself.
The knowledge possessed by the
ancient Egyptians was very ex
tensive. They had a method of
dressing stone to withstand the
ravages of time and weather. They
also perfected the art of embalm
ing. Probes, forceps, and other
surgical instruments have been
found in Egypt. For what pur
pose they were used we will nev
er know.
That secret, along with many
others, passed away with the de
struction of the famous library at
Alexandria in the Fifth century.
The loss of the knowledge con
tained in that library was a blow
to civilization.
Reading and Thinking
Reading furnishes the mind only
with materials of knowledge; it is
thinking makes what we read
ours. So far as we apprehend and
see the connection of ideas, so far
it is ours; without that it is so
much loose matter floating in our
brain.—Locke.
Must Books Be Read ?
The collector of books need not
fear the challenge that is sure to'
be made, sooner or later, by his
skeptical acquaintances: 4,Have|
you read them all?” The first
idea he ought to get out of his
head is that he must only buy
books for immediate reading.
“The charm of a library,” said
that devout book lover, the late
Arnold Bennett, ‘‘is seriously im
paired when one has read the
whole or nearly the whole of its
contents.”
Bennett confessed that he had
hundreds of books he had never
opened, and which, perhaps, he
never would open. But he would
not part with them. He knew
they were good, and as he gazed
on them, he said to them, ‘‘Some
day, if chance favors, your turn
will come. Be patient!”
Best Thoughts
Try to care about something in
this vast world besides the gratifi*
cation of small selfish desires. Try
to care for what is best in thoughl
and action—something that is
good apart from the accidents of
your own lot. Look on other lives
besides your own. See what their
troubles are, and how they are
borne.—George Eliot.
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