Which common metal was worth more per ounce than gold before scientists found a practical means of extracting from the ore?

Aproduction line at v. j. sugumaran's machine shop has three stations. the first station can process a unit in 7 minutes. the second station has two identical machines, each of which can process a unit in 16 minutes (each unit only needs to be processed on one of the two machines). the third station can process a unit in 10 minutes. ▼ is the bottleneck station, with a bottleneck time of nothing minutes per unit (enter your response as a whole number).