Education
- Copper Production
- Copper Facts
- History of Copper
- 60 Centuries of Copper
- Introduction
- The Raw Material
- The Original Sources of Supply
- The Name "Copper"
- The Spanish Mines
- Other Roman Sources of Supply
- The Beginnings of Bronze
- Early Copper Mining in Britain
- Early Smelting Practice
- Mediaeval Sources of English Copper
- The Peak Years of British Copper Mining
- Older Sources of the Metal Abroad
- The Great American Expansion of Copper Mining
- Copper in Ancient Times
- Copper and Bronze in Ancient Greece and Rome
- Copper in the Middle Ages
- Monumental Brasses
- The Mediaeval Bell-founders
- Mediaeval Ordnance
- Brass Wire
- The Pin Trade
- Stained Glass Windows
- Tudor Weights and Measures
- The Great Mediaeval Bronze Doors
- Grilles, Gates, Tombs and Statues
- Weather-Vanes
- Enamelling
- China and Japan in the Middle Ages
- Copper in the Pre-Columbian Civilizations of America
- Early Bronze Casting in West Africa
- The Industrial Age
- The Welsh Process
- Growth of the Brass Trades
- Some More About Pins
- Invention of the Stamping Press
- The Great Inventor-Craftsmen
- Josiah Wedgwood
- Bolsover and Sheffield Plate
- Navigational Instruments
- Brass Clocks and Watches
- Copper Engraving Plates
- Architecture and the Fine Arts
- Development of the Copper Coinage
- The Old Horse-Brasses
- Copper and Brass in Ships
- Copper in Electrical Engineering
- Franklin's Lightning Conductor
- Cavendish
- The Voltaic Pile and its Consequences
- Faraday's Famous Ten Days
- The Widening Field
- The Development of the Dynamo
- The Electric Telegraph
- The First Submarine Cables
- The Atlantic Cable
- Electricity Generation and Supply
- Cadmium Copper
- The Telephone
- Electric Lighting
- Radio and Radar
- Copper in Modern Times
- Introduction
- Copper in the USA
- 60 Centuries of Copper
- The Statue of Liberty
- Copper & Kids
The Raw Material
At the beginning of the present century the world's annual demand for copper was about half a million tons; the United States produced about half this total, whilst Britain's output had fallen to a mere token figure. Today the annual consumption is now more than nine times as large. This dramatic rise in the intervening sixty years can be attributed partly to population growth but mainly to the tremendous technological advances which have received impetus from two World Wars. In the Second World War the demand for copper most certainly could not have been satisfied, but for an invention in 1921, when Perkins patented his process of chemical flotation. This made it possible to mine ores which, up to that time, had been regarded almost everywhere as worthless. Some attempts at flotation of crushed ores had been made ever since 1860, but the process only became commercially important after the 1914-18 war. 29
Copper in Modern Times
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