Hardness of Metals

THE hardness of metals, as Dr. Hugh O'Neill once said, like the storminess of seas, is easily appreciated but not readily measured. Prof. Lea has attempted to describe the various methods of measuring hardness, to establish, from the results of a long series of tests, the relationships between hardness measured by each of these methods, and thence, by means of curves and a chart, to make it possible within certain limits of accuracy to obtain corresponding hardness numbers as determined by the various methods. The book is not so much a discussion of ‘the hardness of metals’, therefore, as a collection of hardness data obtained on a series of materials comprising chiefly heat-treated steels.Hardness of Metals Dr. F. C. LeaBy. Pp. vii + 141. (London: Charles Griffin and Co., Ltd., 1936.) 12s. 6d. net.