ABSTRACT
I still have my grandmother ’ s copper kettle. It was a wedding present from her young brother in 1877. At that time, copper was used for the manufacture of kettles, pots and pans because it was ductile and reasonably corrosion-resistant. Now aluminium, unknown commercially when my grandmother was married, has replaced copper for the manufacture of such kitchenware. In the meantime, the production of increasingly high-purity dead-mild steel – which is as near as we get to pure iron commercially – has confi rmed its use in the manufacture of bodywork of motor cars, domestic refrigerators, washing machines and a multitude of other items of everyday equipment.
