Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 March 1893 — Gold-Plated Ship Bottoms. [ARTICLE]

Gold-Plated Ship Bottoms.

This is the latest novelty promised for scientifiic display. An English scientist describes how this is possible without cost, and how beneficial the plan would be. It is simply the joining of ordinary .copper sheathing to the negative pole of a galvanic battery, and in amalgamating the whole external surface of the copper with mercury. “Under the influence of the electric currents passing traces of the precious metals, gold and silver, will beprecipitated from the water upon the sheathing, and will be there held by the mercury as amalgam.” The idea that gold tracings exist in the waters of the ocean is not new, and there seems to be no scientific objection to the Englishman’s theory. He thinks the amalgam on the“copper sheathing would keep a ship’s bottom tree from barnacles, and that enough precious metal could be obtained to repay the expense of securing —it. [New York News.