But clay, as we know from
its use in making porcelain, is very infusible and difficult to
decompose. Sixty years ago aluminum was priced at $140 a pound, but one
would have had difficulty in buying such a large quantity as a pound at
any price. At international expositions a small bar of it might be seen
in a case labeled "silver from clay." Mechanics were anxious to get the
new metal, for it was light and untarnishable, but the metallurgists
could not furnish it to them at a low enough price. In order to extract
it from clay a more active metal, sodium, was essential. But sodium also
was rare and expensive. In those days a professor of chemistry used to
keep a little stick of it in a bottle under kerosene and once a year he
whittled off a piece the size of a pea and threw it into water to show
the class how it sizzled and gave off hydrogen. The way to get cheaper
aluminum was, it seemed, to get cheaper sodium and Hamilton Young
Castner set himself at this problem. He was a Brooklyn boy, a student of
Chandler's at Columbia.
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