Copper and the Copper-Base Alloys

Copper was undoubtedly the first useful metal to be employed by Man. In many countries it is found in small quantities in the metallic state and, being soft, it was readily shaped into ornaments and utensils. Moreover, many of the ores of copper can easily be reduced to the metal, and since these ores often contain other minerals, it is very probable that copper alloys were produced as the direct result of smelting. It is thought that bronze was produced in Cornwall by acc;dentally smelting ores containing both tin- and copper-bearing minerals in the camp fires of ancient Britons. As a schoolboy the author was taught that the very protracted period of Man s history when progress was extremely slow, namely the Stone Age , was followed by a Bronze Age when primitive technology developed relatively quickly. It is now fairly certain that the Bronze Age was preceded by a comparatively short Copper Age but, because copper corrodes more quickly than bronze, few artefacts of that period have been recovered by archaeologists. It is fairly certain that the Egyptians used copper compounds for colouring glazes some 15 000 years ago and they may have been the first to extract the metal. In Europe copper production seems to have begun in the Balkans some 6000 years ago, and very soon metal workers were hardening copper by the addition of small amounts of arsenic for the manufacture of knives and spear heads. This may well have been the first instance, in Europe at least, of the deliberate manufacture of an alloy.
At the end of the eighteenth century practically all the world s requirement of copper was smelted in Swansea, the bulk of the ore coming from Cornwall, Wales or Spain. Deposits of copper ore were then discovered in the Americas and Australia, and subsequently imported for smelting in Swansea. Later it was found more economical to set up smelting plants near to the mines, and Britain ceased to be the centre of the copper industry.