Ductility
3 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Ductility. All 3 are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
American Watchmaker and Jeweler (1892)
Tena city.(Number of lbs, sustained by c.787 of a line in diameter in wires of the various metals.) Fahrenheit Centig'de Platinum..... 21.40 to 21.50 Infusible except by the Oxyhydrogen blow-pipe. 6 3 274 Gold..... 19.25 to 19.50 2016 deg. 1102 deg. 1 1 150 1/2 Mercury..... 13.56 to 13.59 Lead..... 11.40 to 11.45 612 deg. 322 deg. 7 9 27 1/2 Silver..... 10.47 to 10.50 1873 deg. 1023 deg. 2 2 187 Bismuth..... 9.82 to 9.90 497 deg. 258 deg. Copper..... 8.89 to 8.96 1994 deg. 1090 deg. 3 5 302 Nickel..... 8.40 to 8.60 2700 deg. 1482 deg. 10 10 Iron..... 7.77 to 7.80 2786 deg. 1530 deg. 9 4 549 Tin..... 7.25 to 7.30 442 deg. 228 deg. 5 8 34 1/2 Zinc..... 6.80 to 7.20 773 deg. 412 deg. 8 7 109 1/2 Antimony..... 6.75 to 6.80 A little below red heat. Arsenic..... 5.70 to 5.90 Volatilizes below fusing. Aluminum..... 2.56 to 2.60 1300 deg. 705 deg. 4 6 300
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
the quality which permits a substance to be drawn into a fine wire or thread. Heat increases ductility. Glass at a white heat may be drawn into oval-shaped threads like silk. Of the metals platinum is the most ductile. Then follow gold, silver, iron, copper, zinc, tin, lead, and nickel. Gold has been drawn into wires with a diameter of 4,000 to the inch. It is asserted that platinum wires, 30,000 to the inch, have been drawn. This is as fine as the thread of a spider. Silk, as it leaves the cocoon, runs about 5,000 to the inch. In comparison human hair is coarse. The finest hair is the six-hundredth part of an inch in diameter. Fibers of wool run from 600 to 1,500 to the inch. See Wire ; Nails
The Encyclopedia of Founding (1892)
That property or texture of bodies which renders it practicable to draw them out in length while their thickness is diminished without any actual fracture of their parts, as drawing into wire. Gold is the most ductile of the metals, after which, in their order of value, as follows: silver, platinum, iron, copper, zinc, tin, lead, nickel, palladium, cadmium. See METALS; MALLEABILITY; STRENGTH OF MATERIALS.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The three accounts of 1892 and 1910 treat ductility purely as a ranked property to be tabulated: the Encyclopedia of Founding puts gold first, Aiton's puts platinum first, and neither can say why any metal draws into wire at all. That explanation arrived in 1934, when Taylor, Orowan and Polanyi independently proposed the dislocation, a line defect whose movement through the crystal lattice allows metals to deform permanently instead of snapping; ductility is now measured as percent elongation or reduction of area in a standard tensile test rather than by league table. Aiton's marvel of platinum wire 30,000 to the inch was real, not asserted folklore: it came from Wollaston's trick of drawing platinum inside a silver sheath and dissolving the silver away, and modern laboratories have since pulled gold into chains a single atom wide. A few numbers in the 1892 table have drifted, notably aluminium, whose melting point is 660 C rather than the 705 C given there.
Written for this edition, 2026.