Talk:Duralumin

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If 1908 is correct, the Wright brothers' engine must have been an earlier alloy. A book said that there was only one alloy available in 1903 but did not name it. I was assuming that it was duraluminum. It said that one large aluminum alloy casting made up most of the engine. Perhaps it doesn't take a very good alloy to be better than cast iron when heat conductivity and weight are both important. The engine Manly finished for Langley had much better power to weight (to try to compensate for poorer aerodynamics), but I have not read what the materials were.

As I remember, the name comes from the location of its discovery, which was Düren Germany, but I have not been able to check that on the Web. If anyone else has read that too we should put it in.

From the beginning this article has not been clear in seperating duralumium, a specific, patented alloy, from a lot of other aluminium alloys. Many others don't use copper as the primary alloying element, or don't respond to precipitation heat treatment - the discovery that made duraluminum useful. Meggar 05:17, 2005 September 11 (UTC)

About the origin of the material's name, a page in German Wikipedia mentions that the name came from Latin word "durus" (hard). This is the link of the page: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duralumin