[comp.society.futures] Washington and his aluminum

subar%mwcamis@MITRE.ARPA (11/03/87)

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In posting from: com%"concertina!fiddler@sun.com"  3-NOV-1987
     
> The cap [of aluminum] on the Washington Monument was close to being
> as expensive as gold when it was put in place...
     
What cap?

fiddler%concertina@Sun.COM (Steve Hix) (11/04/87)

In article <8711031730.AA07674@mitre.arpa>, subar%mwcamis@MITRE.ARPA writes:
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>      
>      
> In posting from: com%"concertina!fiddler@sun.com"  3-NOV-1987
>      
> > The cap [of aluminum] on the Washington Monument was close to being
> > as expensive as gold when it was put in place...
>      
> What cap?

According to a National Geogrphic article some years back (I
think it was one of their overview articles on <subject> such
as more recent ones on platinum or Silicon Valley), near the
end of the 19th century the Washington Monument was capped with
an aluminum cover.  I don't know if it is still in place, but
at the time electric refining of aluminum from bauxite had just
been developed and somebody thought it would be a neat idea to
use some of this new metal to cap the obelisk.  At the time,
the cap was worth about the same weight of gold.

	seh