¶ Copper
Index Entry
"Copper is so relatively abundant that it can be functionally used and its functions are very important. Next to gold it is the highest conductor. Its reflectivity is next to gold. It has great workability; it doesn’t harden the way steels do. Its nonrustability lets you put it into alloys and make forgings that are very strong. All these things mean that it has a great many functional uses. And it has a nonsparking quality; you get the sparks with the steels and the ferrous. All the ferrous have sparks and the nonferrous don’t spark.
“There are so many functional uses of copper and it’s relatively abundant. So while its functionally used, it is scarce enough that its cautiously used, because it costs so much more than the ferrous. It is the most sensitive indicator I can find of all the metals. Iron is so much cheaper that it gets carelessly used many times where the copper doesn’t. Iron will follow whatever copper does. Copper, then, is my lead metal to tell me things.”
