Platinum Metals Review - Volume 25, Issue 2, 1981

It is now possible by selecting appropriate reaction conditions to use ruthenium on alumina catalysts to produce economically viable ranges of gasoline and diesel fractions from the synthesis gas produced by coal gasification. Recent work has shown that simultaneous use of ruthenium with an intermediate pore zeolite produces high octane gasoline. The activity and selectivity achievable with ruthenium are compared and contrasted with results from systems based on iron and cobalt catalysts which have already achieved commercial significance.

The wide range of use of the platinum resistance thermometer, roughly 10 to 1000K, is by no means enough to satisfy all demands for temperature standards. Ten years ago thermometers modelled on the capsule-type platinum thermometer but using an alloy of rhodium with 0.5 per cent iron were developed at the National Physical Laboratory specifically to provide standards for lower temperatures, and these are now widely used down to 0.5 K. In a recent joint experiment between the U.S. National Bureau of Standards and N.P.L., rhodium-iron has been used down to 0.01 K by coupling a small sample of the alloy to a resistive squid. Such a device is capable of measuring accurately voltages of less than one nanovolt, and also of measuring the noise voltage in the resistor. Since the latter is dependent on the absolute temperature in a way that could be calculated, the device was able to provide its own calibration.

For a period in the early nineteenth century, when malleable platinum was first available commercially, the high temperature and corrosion resistant properties of the metal were utilised for the manufacture of the touch-holes and pans of flintlock pistols, guns and rifles by English gunmakers, who also used it for some simple decorative purposes. Advances in firearms technology resulted in the effective disappearance of this application round about 1820, although by then platinum was used in various forms of percussion gun. This article considers some aspects of the flintlock use, including the claim made by Joseph Manton that he was the inventor of platinum touch-holes.