Abstract
Copper was the first industrial metal and for over 7000 years has been one of our most essential metals. Coal resources have only been developed in the last few hundred years although the contribution of coal to human welfare has been just as significant. This introductory chapter explains the title of the book and the essential properties of copper and coal that stimulated our demand for both. When steel hulled ships were introduced, there was no longer a need for copper sheathing of wooden hulled ships; however, the Age of Electricity was beginning and copper was in even greater demand. Today there is increasing demand for copper in wind farms and electric cars.
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- 1.
Pastoralist Joseph Bradshaw observed this unusual type of rock art in the northwest Kimberley region of Western Australia while searching for suitable pastoral land in 1891.
- 2.
In 1991, tourists hiking in the southern Tyrol, on the border between Austria and Italy, found a desiccated corpse protruding from a receding glacier. Nick-named Ötzi after the Ötztal region, the ‘Iceman’ had been lying frozen for over 5300 years.
- 3.
A contemporary Roman satirist is credited with saying ‘What the barbarians did not do the Barberinis (Urban VIII’s family name) did’.
- 4.
The Dead Sea Scrolls were found in caves in the vicinity of Khirbet Qumran inland from the northwest shore of the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea or Qumran Caves Scrolls are believed to date from between the last three centuries BC and the first century AD.
- 5.
Claudius Ptolemy was a geographer who worked in Alexandria around 150. He is credited with inventing the concept of longitude and latitude. Christopher Columbus studied Ptolemy’s maps ahead of his 1492 expedition that discovered the Americas.
- 6.
Ships-of-the-line were the British Royal Navy’s largest ships and First rate was the largest class in that category carrying at least 100 guns.
- 7.
Gunmetal, is an alloy of copper, tin and zinc in proportions approximating 88% Cu, 9% Sn and 3% Zn.
- 8.
Aluminium’s highly reactive nature prevents the occurrence of elemental aluminium in natural specimens. Native aluminium grains have been found in some highly reduced (low oxygen) volcanic muds.
- 9.
The Vickers Hardness test was developed in 1921 by Robert L. Smith and George E. Sandland at Vickers Ltd.
- 10.
Optical fibre is a flexible, transparent fibre made by drawing glass (silica) to a diameter slightly thicker than that of a human hair. Fibre optic technology uses pulses of light to carry the signal, whereas on traditional copper wires the message is transmitted by electrical currents.
- 11.
Capacity factor equals the actual energy produced by an energy generating unit divided by the maximum possible energy that the unit can produce.
- 12.
Pyrolysis is a thermochemical decomposition of organic material at elevated temperatures in the absence of oxygen. The word is derived from the Greek pyro ‘fire’ and lysis ‘separating’.
- 13.
Miners in Cornwall traditionally ate meat and potato pasties underground. Assuming a traditional Cornish pasty contains 500 calories, miner’s crib tins (lunchboxes) could be quite large.
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Golding, B., Golding, S.D. (2017). Doctor Copper and King Coal. In: Metals, Energy and Sustainability. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51175-7_1
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