1.1 HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth where moth and rust doth corrupt and where thieves break-through and steal.

(Mathew 6:14)

The word corrosion is as old as the earth, but it has been known by different names. Corrosion is known commonly as rust, an undesirable phenomena which destroys the luster and beauty of objects and shortens their life. A Roman philosopher, Pliny (AD 23 79) wrote about the destruction of iron in his essay Ferrum Corrumpitar. Corrosion since ancient times has affected not only the quality of daily lives of people, but also their technical progress. There is a historical record of observation of corrosion by several writers, philosophers and scientists, but there was little curiosity regarding the causes and mechanism of corrosion until Robert Boyle wrote his Mechanical Origin of Corrosiveness.

Philosophers, writers and scientists observed corrosion and mentioned it in their writings:

• Pliny the elder (AD 23 79) wrote about spoiled iron.

• Herodotus (fifth century BC) suggested the use of tin for protection of iron.

• Lomonosov (1743 1756).

• Austin (1788) noticed that neutral water becomes alkaline when it acts on iron.

• Thenard (1819) suggested that corrosion is an electrochemical phenomenon.

• Hall (1829) established that iron does not rust in the absence of oxygen.

• Davy (1824) proposed a method for sacrificial protection of iron by zinc.

• De la Rive (1830) suggested the existence of microcells on the surface of zinc.

The most important contributions were later made by Faraday (1791 1867) [1] who established a quantitative relationship between...