uses for pure mercury?

Build a manometer to balance carburettors on engines with more than one carburettor.

Regards Colin

Try at least ten years earlier. Gerry :-)} London, Canada

Nickel bags of chips? Hmm.. hearing aid batteries? ca. 1964?

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Were you implying that the mercury cell wasn't around in 1964?

Panasonic says they had them in 1955:

The transmitters in the USA's first successful Vanguard I satellite launched in 1958, were powered by mercury cells. (DAMHIKT)

Jeff

Yeah, back in the '50s (before mercury was poison) I got hold of several AA size mercury cells. Smashing them with a hammer exposed a bluish "clay" that glistened with mercury. I made a centrifuge of sorts that attached to an electric fan to render out the mercury. A manometer has been suggested so how about a barometer?

No, I was (wrongly) estimating when the first transistorized hearing aids would have been commercialized.

And I do think I recall silver bags of Hostess chips for $.05 when I was a small boy, but the big bags were a dime.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Yes, but by that time the bag cost more than the chips. Grandpa's first hearing aid fit in a special large shirt pocket with a cut out for the microphone and the battery pack fit on his belt, a dentist made the earpiece. I still have hearing aid vacuum tubes somewhere down in my "good things." Gerry :-)} London, Canada

Tilt operated switches for trunk and underhood lights on cars also use(d) mercury switches, as do explosion proof limit switches. Mercury whetted contacts used to be common on some industrial relays too, if my memory serves correctly.

I thought they'd moved to rolling ball type contacts?

There are mercury wetted reed relays, and mercury displacement contactors. The first contain very little mercury, the latter quite a bit.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

There were many millions of mercury switches used for hood and trunk lights. I saw on TV a few years ago where junk yards are required to remove them... they showed a shot of a whole bucket full of them one yard had collected for recycling.

A lot of older gas appliances had mercury pilot 'sensors', or whatever they called them.

There was another big flap a while back about some of those children's tennis shoes with the flashing lights having mercury switches IIRC.

Erik

Sounds like something a mercury manufacture or a manufacture that uses mercury would say. You might want to review the well documented mercury problem that existed in Japan in the ?60s?

Minamata Japan. Organic mercury compounds discharged Chisso Chemical Company. Ingested by the population of a fishing village in the late

1950s. The company only was forced to pay compensation relatively recently. American Eugene Smith became an activist on this matter and brought it to the world's attention. For his trouble, he was beaten almost to death by company thugs.

Here is one of his most famous images (it's a copyright infringment, of course)

I've been through Smith's archives at the University of Arizona, and done some study of the matter. The girl in the photo, Tomoko Uemura, died on December 7, 1977 according to a private e-mail I got recently. She was born in 1956.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

It's still used for refining gold, at least in some third world countries. I recall a documentary about some big pit gold mine where people dug up gold by hand in small sqare plots, After separating as much sand and gravel from the gold dust as possible, they added mercury, which sticks to the gold, forming a pasty ball. They put it in a cloth bag and squeeze out as much mercury as possible. =20 Then, with everyone standing around, breathing, burn off the mercury, leaving molten gold. =20

To reply, please remove one letter from each side of "@" Spammers are VERMIN. Please kill them all.

I recently picked up this interesting link about other "shiny" room temperature liquid metals; apologies if it was on this newsgroup.

Jeff

Minimata's disease is caused by organic mercury compounds, mostly methyl mercury IIRC. Metallic mercury is a kitty cat in comparison.

Jim

Charles Chips, when I was a kid. Delivered via truck, like milk. Return the tins, get more chips. Magic!

Back to the topic of mercury, as I was reading this thread last night, I was hearing on the local news (Atlanta) about a Sierra Club study that found unacceptable levels of mercury in 1/6 th of random fish samples (not just tuna, but farm raised catfish, also) from local big chain supermarkets. Mercury as we know screws up people; kids mostly. Bottom line was that much of the mercury comes from coal fired power plants, and there is a push to get GW to honor some clean air act, due up sometime in the near future. I need to research this, and will.

So, Gunner...please write or call or E-mail Your Commander-in-Chief; My President,as I am, So that the air our grankids breath, and the fish they catch and eat in the wilderness as an exercise in *miscellaneous survival skills* (ahem) will not scramble their little brains.

I am a left wing nutcase radical lamppost swinging candidate to think this way, I know. Maybe I should crosspost to altcarlmaldennose so's I'll swing a bit more right

~Dave

Dave wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@Bellsouth.net:

Also, I read recently that the higher-priced, higher-quality, albacore tuna had the most mercury. The cheap stuff was the better bargain, not only in price, but in health cost, too. Good thing I like the cheap stuff better.

Yes. Albacore is higher up on the food chain. More mercury accumulation.

I wonder how much mercury is in G*****'s Coyote and jelly sammiches?

Must be some; he's ...bolts.

~D