Discussion about this post

Brad DeLong's avatar
Kaleberg's avatar

I liked the Alchian piece. So, it turns out that lithium batteries are an offshoot of the development of the hydrogen bomb. We use a lot more metals nowadays than we did back in the 1940s. Metals like titanium, americium, cobalt and the like are now important commodities. Having picked up a copy of The Rare Metals Handbook, circa 1970, I couldn't help noticing that so many required a combination of chemical and electrical extraction. Since then, electrical extraction seems to have taken over, even in the reduction of iron. Once again, the demand for a material led to new processing technologies that opened even more avenues for improving a broad variety of processes. I doubt that Teller, Ulam and the rest of the gang were thinking of cordless power drills, laptop computers or electric cars when they considered using lithium, but now we have them all the same.

P.S. No one seems to make industrial promotional films anymore. Where's my Marvelous Lithium? I searched Youtube. Surely we have not lost our sense of wonder.

Expand full comment
Alex Tolley's avatar

Link to 5/12 page broken - pointing to here - 5/07. This needs to be fixed as it seems to be a recurring problem.

Expand full comment
2 more comments...

No posts