Brass early history

Copper, being easy to mine and refine, has become a very versatile metal over the course of civilization. Early in human history, it was discovered that soft copper could be made harder and stronger when alloyed with other metals. Copper was and still is important to technology and the development of civilizations. Over the past several thousand years, brass has found multiple uses, such as in coins, cooking utensils, and many types of instruments and hardware that are resistant to corrosion. Even today, brass is used to make musical instruments and bathroom, kitchen, and marine hardware. The U.S. one-cent penny was originally made of copper, but today the penny is made of zinc with a coating of copper. Copper is also an alloy metal used as a substitute for some of the silver in several other U.S. coins. 

In about 1830 an unsuccessful attempt was made to determine the nature of a peculiar ore from die Saucon Valley near Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Mr. W. T. Roepper, who afterward became the first professor of mineralogy at Lehigh University, identified it as calamine, zinc hydrosilicate, and produced brass by smelting it with native copper (110). The history of early zinc works in die Lehigh Valley has been ably presented in die Journal of Chemical Education by R. D Billinger (110). 

Zinc oxide is a very old technological material. Already in the Bronze Age it was produced as a byproduct of copper ore smelting and used for healing of wounds. Early in history it was also used for the production of brass (Cu-Zn alloy). This was the major application of ZnO for many centuries before metallic zinc replaced the oxide [149]. With the start of the industrial age in the middle of the nineteenth century, ZnO was used in white paints (chinese white), in rubber for the activation of the vulcanization process and in porcelain enamels. In the following a number of existing and emerging electronic applications of ZnO are briefly described. 

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