Abstract
THE surface of meteoric iron after polishing and etching in the way usually adopted, prior to examination under the microscope, shows characteristic figures which are for the most part triangles or parallelograms. These figures were observed for the first time in i8o8 by M. Alois de Widmansttten, the director of the Imperial Porcelain Works at Vienna on the Ilraschina meteorite, and although Widmansttten himself had published nothing regarding his discoveries, a knowledge of them spread very quickly, and what he had seen were soon universally known under the name of “Widmansttten figures.” It was then generally considered that these figures were char acteristic of meteoric iron and that they were not found in terrestrial iron. Guillet-Laumont2 in 1813 already saw an analogy between the two varieties of iron; but the majority of investigators for a long time were of a different opinion, and the views of Guillet-Laumont were forgotten.
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References
2 Cohen, Meteorilenkunde, 1894, vol. i. p. 41.
4 Sur la reproduction artificielle de la structure de widmansttten dans ier au carbone, N. T. Belaiew, Revue de M tallurgie, 1910, p. 510.
7 See also Sur la crystallisation et structure des aciers refroidis lentement, N. T. Belajew, Revue de M tallurgie, 1912, p. 321.
8 Metallic Alloys, G. H. Gulliver .
9 Sur les alliages du platine avec l'aluminium, by M. Chouriguine, Revue de M tallurgie, 1912, p. 8735.
10 This photograph was taken by M. Timoth ieff .
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The Widmanstatten Structure in Various Alloys and Metals 1 . Nature 94, 107–109 (1914). https://doi.org/10.1038/094107a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/094107a0