Tungsten Plating

Columbia's Professor Colin Garfield Fink, who gave Industry a chromium-plated shield against rust, last week took out a patent for a tungsten-plated shield.

Twenty million tons of iron and steel rust out of use each year. Electrolytic iron resists corrosion, but is difficult to make. Chromium alloyed with iron makes "rustless iron." "Stainless" steel contains iron, carbon and chromium. But for a multitude of uses a coating over the iron or steel objects suffices. Paint serves well in many places, as does zinc (galvanizing), tin, copper, lead, concrete. Nickel does not tarnish readily, resists corrosion, has high lustre, is hard, and has long been used to plate iron & steel. In all those qualities chromium surpasses nickel. When Professor Fink and others showed how chromium could be electroplated manufacturers quickly adopted chromium plating for electrotypes, motor car radiator shells, bumpers and other accessories, plumbing fixtures, mirrors, kitchen gear.

Uses of Dr. Fink's tungsten plate will be less ubiquitous. Its chief value lies in its resistance to hydrochloric acid. Only gold is so resistant. But gold is too precious to coat the pots and pipes of Industry. Professor Fink, 51, claims to be the "originator of the drawn tungsten filament'' for lamps.* Another scientist given the kudos is General Electric's Dr. William David Coolidge, 59. In 1914 the American Academy of Arts & Sciences gave Dr. Coolidge its prized Rumford Medal for the ''invention and applications of ductile tungsten." Dr. Coolidge also was in last week's news. Director of General Electric's research laboratory since 1900 and vice president in charge of research since 1928 has been Dr. Willis Rodney Whitney, who once averred that he "would rather teach than be President." He has been entirely responsible, as organizer and stimulator, of G. E.'s scientific staff and progress. Dr. Coolidge once said of him: "It is because Dr. Whitney is there that [Dr. Irving] Langmuir and I can play around. He stands between us and the demands that we do something practical." Dr. Whitney is now 64, and worn out. Apart from his executive duties he has done research on his own account--solubility, colloids, suspensions, corrosion of iron, chromium sulphate compounds. His latest work has been on radiothermy, raising the temperature of the body by high frequency waves. Radiothermy is now being used, in preference to malaria, to create the artificial fever which makes paretics at least temporarily clear-minded. Two years ago Dr. Whitney suffered a nervous breakdown. Last week he was a patient of the Mayo Clinic. He had long wanted to abdicate his research directorship. But no one with G. E. was willing to supplant him, and President Gerard Swope would bring in no outsider. Last week President Swope made a decision, accepted Dr. Whitney's resignation as director of research, continued him as vice president in charge of the 300 scientists whom the corporation employs. Promoted to stand between those scientists and demands that they "do something practical" was long-protected Dr. William David Coolidge.

*Tungsten lamps use 1.25 watts to produce one candlepower of light. Carbon filament lamps, which are still purchasable, give one candlepower for 3.25 watts. From these ratios statisticians figure that tungsten filaments save U. S. users of electricity one billion dollars yearly. Consumers buy 300,000,000 tungsten lamps a year.

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