Germanium - The Other Silver

When you're doing e-waste you need large volumes of material to make it profitable. From what i could tell Germanium was used during the 1950's in the manufacture of transistors & such. It's like anything else. They did it one way when the technology was first introduced and then something better came along to take it's place. The "something better" was the silicon based transistor.



To make it work you would need to be getting lots of old electronics from the 1950's time period. That's stuff that's 60 - 70 years old. You might find a few pieces in a museum or an old barn but for the most part that it's not something you're likely to run across anymore.