La farmacia d'epoca

Vitallium


This is not the usual pharmaceutical box, but as I continuously repeat “if it’s curious, it may worth a post”, here you go the cardboard box of Vitallium, an alloy of cobalt and chromium resistant to corrosion and high temperatures, used to made dentures.Vitallium is property of Austenal Laboratories, founded in the early Twenties by Charles Prange and Reiner Erdle, but the two weren't the minds behind this alloy. The “father” of Vitallium was Albert Merrick, who invented it in 1932.This alloy is composed by a 60 % of cobalt, a 20 % of chromium and a 5 % of molybdenum, as I previously said, this material is very resistant, but at the same time very ductile, two characteristics that made Vitallium used even nowadays in the medical field, but its qualities do not end there, in fact, this alloy was employed in the past by the NACA ( the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics now NASA ) to produce the turbine disks of jets and planes.There is the photo of the box:
It measures 9,8 cm ( 3,86 inch ) x 7 cm ( 2,76 inch) x 6,1 cm ( 2,36 inch) and it could be dated around the Fifties. Thanks for reading my post! English is not my mother language, so if you find grammatical errors, typos or other incorrect things please leave me a comment: I will change them as soon as I can. Bye!