| NE IT KOBOLD^WI: Is the evil -pirit ot the old Sa - on miners destined soon to revolutionize the automobile industry? Back in the middle ages, when the now famous mines of Schneeberg were op ened, the Saxon miners were not long in discovering that the silver was nearly always associated with a strange mineral and that it frequently replaced the pre cious ore altogether. Specimens of this mineral were turned over to the wise men of the "~>ne and all pro nounced it useless. - iafter, as they mined, and their eyes fell on the con stant companion of the silver they were industriously after, the miners, in con tempt. dubbed it kobold. That is to say, gnome, or evil spirit; for, like an evil spirit, they said, it was present only to give them trouble. Kobold, we of to-day still call this metal, which is one of the elements, though the spelling is now cobalt. It was not until the middle of the six teenth century, many generations after the namers of the metal had been gath ered to their fathers, that even slight use for it was discovered. Up to to-day its uses have been limited when com pared with other elements; it is still the gnome of old in large measure. But, will this hold good of it in the near future? "For a number of years I have been working on my electric storage battery, as you probably know," said Thomas A. Edison, in substance, recently. "It has been iny aim to build a battery that will take an automobile a hundred miles without having to be recharged. The problem was baffling until I introduced cobalt into the battery cells. Now I be lieve that I have the battery all right, and the only problem remaining to be solved in order to make the battery prac ticable is for me to find a way to get cobalt in sufficient quantity and cheaply." How docs Mr Edison employ cobalt in his battery? lie smilingly keeps the secret to himself. But, he says, if only he can solve the one problem now con fronting liiin—that of cheap supply—the use of his battery will cut down the present wight of the automobile by half. This of itself will greatly reduce the price of the machine, thus tending to make it a necessity instead of the lux ury that it now is. It will also increase the speed possibilities. Last, but not least, the automobilist will no longer be dependent on gasoline, the favorite mo tive power of to-day, or steam. Both are objectionable for obvious reasons. Against electricity none of these objec tions can be raised; it is a noiseless, odorless "fuel." Thus, Mr. Edison's battery, if the hopes of its inventor in finding cobalt are realized, will bring about a revolu tion in the electrical world as gr.-at as that which took place in the world of water when Robert Fulton demonstrated that a boat could steam her way from port to port even better than she could make the same trip by sail. Mr. Edison is now traveling about the country, endeavoring to locate cobalt sources of sufficient quantity and purity to cheapen it to the point where his bat tery will be practicable. Cobalt now sells for two dollars a quarter pound. A few days ago it was worth twenty five cents more. A quarter of a pound of cobalt has about as much bulk as the same amount of iron. Mr. Edison's bat- "P'.CTORIAL.COLOR AND MAGAZINE SECTION The Cameron County Press. EMPORI .4, PA., OCTOBER u, 1906. tery culls for a great deal of cobalt, and cobalt at two dollars a pound, Mr. Edi son feels, would be looked upon as a luxury by most of those very fortunate persons whose pocketbooks enable them to view even the imported gasoline tour ing car as a positive necessity to their well-being. Mr. Edison has inspected cobalt de posits in North Carolina. He has been to Canada. He will goto Missouri, He has other places on his visiting list. Will his patient quest be rewarded by suc cess? That is a question that automo bile manufacturers are anxiously asking themselves. No one who knows Mr. Edi son doubts that he has got pretty nearly what he says he has in his storage bat tery. Mr. Edison has never been of that type of man who announces that he has something which time sooner or later proves that lie has not. lo invent and perfect an electrical storage battery for widespread commer cial use has been the dream, the ambi tion, of Mr. Edison for years. Nay, it has been his hobby, to the practical ex clusion of all other scientific investiga tion. He has worked day and night over the problem; he has frequently thought he stood on the threshold of success, only to be disappointed the next day, or week. In all these years that he ha- been struggling with the problem interviewers have had a hard time to get him to talk on any subject other than his storage battery. His fellow scientists have twitted him good -naturedly on his lug ging in of the battery at every possible turn of conversation. It is scarcely to be doubted that he has given more time and thought to the battery than he did to any one of liis many inventions that are now benefiting mankind immeas urably. Mr. Edison himself declares that until he has perfected a storage battery along the lines that he has laid down for himself he v ill not feel that he has done his full share of the world's work. When one realizes how earnestly, and with what singleness of purpose, one might say, Mr. Edison has pursued the problem of the storage battery, does not the Wizard's more or less prolonged trips here and there over the face of the country in anxious search for the much desired "evil spirit" of the old Saxon miners savor of the intensely dramatic? miners' beds savor of the intensely dramatic? Cobalt, this gnome, this evil spirit that holds such rosy promise for the future, has been practically unknown to giie average person. Let us see what it is and what it does. It is the principal ingredient of a color ing matter known as smalt, which is em ployed by laundresses to correct the yel low color of newly washed linen, and by paper manufacturers as a blue pig ment for staining writing papers and col oring wall paper. Smalt is the only substance that will give a lastino blue to paper, and, until an artificial ultramarine was introduced, it was used exclusively for this purpose. Smalt is obtained by fusing roasted cobalt ore with pearl-ash and quartz sand. The molten mass is poured into water and finely powdered. This powder it is that is used after the fashion of indigo and to stain the dainty blue note-paper that is a favorite now-a days for carrying tender messages around the world. Cobalt, when compounded with oxy gen, also gives a blue color, and oxide of cobalt is used exclusively to color glass, porcelain and pottery. The color ing properties of cobalt blue, essentially the oxide of cobalt, is so great that the addition of one-thousandth part of co balt blue to white glass is sufficient to make the glass a decided blue. Cobalt blue, as a pigment, is used by painters and water color workers; they could not get many effects without it. Old Sevres blue, a very famous porce lain blue, King's blue, Th. nard's blue, variegated blue, turquoise blue, deep blue, employed in porcelain coloring, all more or less widely known blues, have cobalt for their base. And then there is zaffre, a flaky blue crystalline stuff. that is used for the groundwork of the old-fashioned blue and gold sign boards; the presence of oxide of cobalt as a base makes it blue. So remarkably does cobalt possess the power of "making things blue," to use a common expression, that even the faintest trace of it will render iron slag distinctly blue. It could almost be said, in all truth, that cobalt, in compound, blues the world. Had it not been for cobalt the writers of the old fashioned adventure novels would have been deprived of one of their stock and always thrilling incidents—the invisible letter, written between the lines of the visible lelter, and always reaching the heroine in the nick of time and keep ing her from dying of anguish or hope long deferred. A chloride of cobalt, when dissolved in a grc.it deal of water, gives invisible or sympathetic ink. A faint pink in color when in dilute solution, the color is not discoverable when used on paper. Only when the piece of paper is heated before a fire, thus causing the chloride to lose the water, does the writing stand out blue, thus enabling it to be read with ease. The writing can be made invisible again by putting the paper in a damp place or by holding it over a steaming kettle, a la the heroines of long ago. According to "Watt's Dictionary of Chemistry," these are the properties of cobalt: "Steel gray, lustrous, crystalline plates; nearly white when polished; hard; somewhat malleable; very ductile at red heat and upwards; slightly mag netic, even at full red he.it. The com pact metal does not oxidize in air at or dinary temperatures." Chemically, cobalt is classed with iron, nickel and manganese in the iron group. In many respects it closely resembles both iron and nickel, the latter more than iron. It is found associated with silver, nickel, iron, manganese and bismuth. It is difficnlt to separate cobalt from its associates, especially nickel. It is seldom I mined for itself alone; it is more profit able t<| secure it as a by-product. Bui the may not be far distant when cobalt Jvill be mined for itself alone. Ir its greatest quantity cobalt is now pro duced as an accessory of nickel. Thei? is evidence to show that the use of fcobalt in coloring glass is one of the rediscovered secrets of the ancients. Modeia Europe did not know of this properla of cobalt oxide until 1540; be fore t§t time the metal was supposed to be worthless, in compound, as it "is now ifi itself—except in Mr. Edison's batter;* of course. Blue pottery and glass ecovered from ancient ruins have been fciiiid to have cobalt as a base for their <<ipr. Not antil almost two hundred years after tik first commercial use of this gnome petal was discovered by Scheurer did BiSftdt recognize it as one of the ele ments! Now, nearly two and three quarteii centuries after Brandt, it would seem |1 at the element itself is to be proved :ommercially useful and cause a startliil revolution in transportation, if only v can be produced in sufficient quantij and purity to make it cheap. it can be found in a compara tively | ] jre state the long and tedioui proce; will render its use in Mr. Edi son's I :tory impracticable. The irincipal localities of cobalt pro duction to-day are Schneeberg, Saxony, wherej he metal got its bad name; Mo ditm, jl orway; Tunaberg, Sweden; Mu sen, Ift enish Prussia; Bolivia; Chile; a little ;spot in Missouri; the Transvaal, where it pure variety of what is known as sp'»s cobalt, free of nickel, has re cently peen found; and Canada, where it is Aii'ied as an accessory of silver. Thi sqCanada mines are the latest to be op aled. The presence of the element in tlu was not suspected until a big!l cut for a new railroad through virgir Sorest revealed it in company with its Cititomary bed-fellow, silver. The latter jnetal at once brought about an influx f>f miners, who were not long in makii g the discovery that the by-product of co'jjjlt would be a very valuable asset to th mines. Hence, to-day quite an appro Aible percentage of the world's suppl riol cobalt is being obtained from Ontai io. Round about the combined co balt ;i| d silver mines, which are more like ( i ;gings than mines, a town of sev eral t ousand inhabitants has sprung into e} istence, and it is now possible for the t 1 veler togo from New York to Chica fb without a change of Pullmans into 11 very heart of this region, which only is few months ago was a veritable wilde* ess. Many Americans are living in th'P own, and not a few of the mines are cq trolled by Yankee capitalists; it is Ai 1 rican money that is largely re spons ie for the rapid development of the I 5 iada of to-day. Tht discovery and development of sever 1 more cobalt beds as extensive as the t | ladian bed would probably bring dawn the price of the mineral to the figure lesired by Mr. Edison. And with this 11 izard of the Century on the track of th : metal, who knows where it will be tn j ed next, to the end that you and I ma I behold another wonderful revo lutior 1 in transportation and other appli cation! of electricity?
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