Word: mica
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Around Washington bars the gag is that only two kinds of freight now get A-1-a priorities on airplane space from the Far East to the U.S.: 1) generals, 2) mica. Last week came good news on one of these two strategic materials: the General Aniline & Film Corp. has developed a synthetic substitute that can double for some of mica's most essential war uses. A new Aniline plant, now building, will come into production soon...
...Mica, which laymen know as isinglass, is mainly used in peacetime as a nonconductor for electrical equipment. When war hit the Far East, almost everything about mica immediately became a military secret. Reason: most high-grade mica comes from India, and without it no tank, ship or airplane would be of much use, since mica is essential for radio condensers, and there have been no acceptable substitutes...
...hard, sold himself to the Signal Corps. His job: teaching Signal Corps men to make emergency radio repairs in the dark. >Toledo Scale Co. has a new instrument, invented by blind Evelyn Watson of Buffalo, which permits blind people to weigh by ear such things as powder for fuses, mica for radio installations, buttons, screws. The machine is set to indicate a certain weight, signals dit-dah when the needle is under the mark, dah-dit when it is over, buzzzzzzz when it is "on the beam." >Trico Products Corp. of Buffalo has developed a Braille-type micrometer for checking...
...counts upon Mexico for 45% of its requirements of graphite, 33% of its antimony, 40% of its sisal and henequen, 19% of its lead, a growing portion of its lumber (particularly mahogany, for plywood planes), plus important fractions of its needs for molybdenum, mercury, cobalt, manganese, mica, tungsten, tin, vanadium. This year Mexico will ship the U.S. some 400,000 tons of these metals alone; next year the figure should rise to nearly 2,000,000 tons...
...without that immediate threat, the shipping shortage itself has cut into jute supplies. Ships from India must carry even more vital products, such as manganese (three-fifths of the world's production is in India and the U.S.S.R., and Russia is now even more remote than India) and mica (essential for electric insulation, 80% of it comes from India). Every war since the Crimean has created a boom in jute, but this is the first time the Western Hemisphere faced jutelessness...