Excerpt from Alloys and Their Industrial Applications There has been some difference of opinion as to the origin of the word alloy, but according to roberts-austen it is derived from the Latin word alligo (ad ligo), to bind to, and refers to the union or binding together of the metals constituting the alloy. From the earliest times alloys were produced accidentally by the simultaneous reduction of mixtures of metallic ores, but there is little doubt that the first metals to be intentionally alloyed were the precious metals, and more especially gold, and it is equally certain that these attempts to alloy the precious metal were of a fraudulent character, and carried out with the object of producing a metal which might be substituted for the pure metal. How long these fraudulent but successful practices were carried on without any adequate means of detection it is impossible to say, but they received their first check when Archimedes con ceived the brilliant idea that all bodies when immersed in water must displace their own volume of water irrespective of their weights, and that their weights in water would be less than their weights in air by the weight of the water thus displaced. From this he argued that if gold were alloyed with another metal its presence could be detected by determining the displacement in water, and the story of his detection of the addition of an alloy to the gold used in making the king's crown is too well known to need repetition. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.