St. Petersburg, Russia/stpet183-mining
Previous | Home | NextA further excursion on Vasily Island, before leaving for the southern shore of the Neva River, is the G. V. Plekhanov Saint Petersburg State Mining Institute and Technical University, about 1.9 km further southwest. The original Mining School was founded here in 1771; it became the Mining Cadet Corps in 1804, then the Institute of the Mining Corps in 1833, and finally the Mining Institute in 1866. The building was constructed during 1806-1811. Here Sobelevsky analyzed the first platinum discovered in the Urals in the early 1920s, and in 1927 developed the process for producing malleable platinum for coinage: "Pure platinum sponge is packed as tightly as possible into an iron mold having the form of a hollow cylinder, and compressed strongly by means of a screw press. One taking it out of the mold a compact metallic disc is obtained. Platinum in this state is not malleable, the force of cohesion between the particles does not withstand sharp blows -- the disk breaks and crumbles. [In the same mold ] bring them to a white heat and compress again. At once the disk completely changes is appearance: the granular structure becomes compact and the disk can be forged. Then the disks are hammered into bands or bars in the usual way."
