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Gold/Mining/Energy : Copper - analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Henrik who wrote (267)	2/11/2001 9:12:28 PM
From: Stephen O	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2131

Copper gains the limelight again in smart home era SYDNEY AN ARMY of builders in Australia are in training to install electronic "brains" into new homes to make them smarter than their 20th century predecessors. At the core of the pioneering initiative is a central nervous system of copper wire tentacles installed before the walls go up. Homeowners are offered such options as accessing the internet from kitchen appliances, bedside panels, even the bathroom. Security cameras can be turned on even if you are overseas; energy consumption can be monitored and adjusted automatically. That's just for starters. Carry the portable television into the kitchen to watch over dinner? How 20th Century. Why not just turn on the refrigerator door, or the kitchen wall for that matter? Appliance makers are trial-testing internet-based refrigerators and ovens with promising results and may eventually move on to microwaves, washing machines and other household goods. A new breed of architects and homebuilders regard most conventionally built houses as dumb and gluttons for energy. "Interior reform" is the latest catch-phrase, and experts say it won't happen without copper. Smelted as early as 3,500 BC, copper is about as far from a new age material as you can get. Or is it? The first thing many miners working in Bingham Canyon, Utah, did when they bought their homes from the Kennecott Copper Company was rip down the copper roofing, replace it with brick or shingles and sell the metal as scrap. Built decades ago as a company town, it seemed natural at the time to use copper from the giant Bingham Lode to help erect the sprawling suburb. But by the time Kennecott had decided it no longer wanted to be a landlord as well as a mining company, copper roofing in houses worldwide was on its way out, deemed yesterday’s metal for such purposes and too expensive to boot. The role of copper in 21st century applications flys in the face of doomsayers of the last century who predicted the advent of fibre optics would relegate the metal to the most basic of industrial uses. — Reuters