July, 1930
ISDUSTRIAL B S D E S G I S E E R I S G CHEMISTRY
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AMERICAN CONTEMPORARIES William D. Horne
A
RECENT visit t o Central Hershey, Cuba, found Doctor Horne seated on the tile-floored, vine-covered verandah of his lovely bungalow, “La Vista,” looking out across a scene to justify the name. Through the purple brachts of the bougainvillea could be seen the carefully tended fairway of a nine-hole golf course, while beyond rolled the silver-green of the cane fields studded with occasional royal palms, ending in the brilliant blue of the Gulf Stream. Over Daiquiris, supplied by his delightful wife, we swapped reminiscences of the old days a t the National Refinery, and he discussed his latest ideas on sugar work and enthusiastically dug into his library for books that had pleased him and for excerpts that he wanted t o quote. The latest gossip from his two sons (both Princeton graduates) and his daughter (Vassar), all married, mingled pleasantly with discussions of pH, bone-black filtration, clarification of cane juice, and all the inevitable shop talk that follows when sugar men get together. William Dodge Horne was literally born and raised in the sugar business. Born in Brooklyn in January, 1866, within sight and smell of the sugar refineries which lined the water front, he breathed in from the cradle the atmosphere of the industry which was later t o occupy so much of his time and thought and in whose technology he was t o W. D. attain prominence. When he was five vears old, his parents moved t o Bermuda and later t o South america, where he was brought into intimate relationship with raw-sugar manufacture, with which branch of the industry he was also t o be identified. The beauty of the cane fields, the picturesque setting of the sugar houses, the glamour of the crude “open-kettle” process-these (and probably the excellent flavor of the muscovado sugars made in the Barbadoes in those days) all combined t o fire the youthful Horne with an enthusiasm from which he has never recovered. He entered Columbia University in 1882, specializing wherever possible in the study of sugar chemistry and technology, and was graduated in 1886. Eight years later he received his doctorate from the same institution, and it is no surprise t o learn t h a t his thesis was on “Advances in Sugar Manufacture and Machinery.” Meanwhile, on leaving college, Horne went immediately t o the Oxnard-Fulton Sugar Refinery in Brooklyn as chief chemist. He has always said that it is a source of regret that he started out in charge of a laboratory instead of working himself up from one of the routine positions. As will be shown later, this man, who never took a shift as tester or bench man, did more to simplify routine sugar analysis than anyone in recent times. He was successively chief chemist of two or three of the smaller sugar refineries, and in 1893 entered the employ of the National Sugar Refinery a t Yonkers, being identified with this corporation for thirty years or more. Throughout these years his position was that of a consultant, which permitted him to do outside work and gave him an opportunity t o cover a wide variety of interests. Among other activities, he was health commissioner and chemist-bacteriologist t o the city of Yonkers. I n these
capacities he developed a method for removing algal odors from water by means of potassium permanganate, and treated the city water supply with chlorinated lime as his own idea, only t o find that some one else had suggested the same treatment several years before. I t was in 1903 that he presented a t Rome, before the International Congress of Applied Chemistry, the method of “dry lead” defecation for sugar analysis which has carried Horne’s name into every sugar laboratory in the world. Although the method was devised primarily t o avoid the error due t o the volume of the lead precipitate in sugar polarizations, he quickly recognized that this dry subacetate of lead had even greater advantages in other kinds of sugar work. Routine purity determinations, carried out by the hundreds in all sugar refineries and beet factories every day, were greatly simplified by the elimination of the laborious one-tenth dilution necessary with subacetate of lead solution. Of greater use still, the dry lead proved t o be the ideal preservative for cane juices, and today all the factories in the tropics base their control on juice samples kept with Horne’s dry lead. It is doubtful whether any other single development in sugar-laboratory technic could have accomplished as much in keeping a man’s name before the rank and file of sugar workers in Horne all branches of the industry. He is “Horne, the dry lead man,” in the minds of many who have never met ,him. For this contribution t o sugar analysis he received the silver medal of the Association des Chimistes de Sucrerie de France, of which he has long been a member. Active in the work of the AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY since 1886, Doctor Horne has been a frequent contributor t o its journals. That child of promise, Volume I, No. 1, of INDUSTRIAL AND ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY carried an article by him on his favorite topic, the cane-sugar industry. His interest in the raw-sugar branch dates from about 1903, when he established a laboratory and instituted the chemical control a t Central Chaparra, Cuba. Experiments in cane-juice defecation a t that time resulted many years later in his patented “super-defecation,” which involves the use of a combination of soluble phosphates and.sodium carbonate (sold under the trade name “Amigon”) in conjunction with two successive settlings of the juice. For the past five years he has been employed by Mr. Hershey, the chocolateer, a t Central Hershey in studies which look toward the unification of raw-sugar manufacture and refining. A certain sartorial perfection, a precision of dress and of grooming, has always marked the Doctor. A picture comes t o mind of some experiments being carried out on the kiln floor in the National Refinery years ago, with Doctor Horne in spotless white overalls and jumper apparently unaffected by the temperature, exemplifying what the well-dressed man should wear in a char house while the rest of us sweated and cursed the heat.
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I n conclusion, let us turn to an incident that occurred a t a Cuban factory where he was making some investigations in cane-juice defecation. It was before the days of pH in the sugar industry and Horne was never without his own specially made and fondly cherished litmus paper. After the experiments were successfully concluded, he was escorted to the railroad station by most of the technical force of the factory and
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as the train pulled out an irreverent group of ex-collegians yelled: “Litmus paper blue, litmus paper red Amigon, amigon; Home’s dry lead.”
GEORGE P. MEADE
AMERICAN CHEMICAL INDUSTRIES The International Nickel Company
T
H E discovery of nickel ore near the village of Orford, in Quebec, marked the beginning of the activities which have contributed to the formation of The International Nickel Company of Canada, Ltd. The record of these events is one of pioneering in the rugged north country, solving apparently impossible metallurgical problems and discovering markets for the metal. Through it all there is a fine courage in time of adversity and faith in the future, coupled with a determination to succeed. This account is, in reality, an outline sketch of the men who from small beginnings have built a world-wide nickel industry. In 1877the attention of W. E. C. Eustis, of Boston, was drawn to a mine in Quebec, which h e p u r c h a s e d , and formed t h e Orford Nickel Company, with the services of Robert G. Leckie on mining, John L. Thomson on smelting, and Henry M. Howe as manager and consulting engineer. Difficulties in smelting the ore led to the purchase of an adjoining copper deposit, t h e C r o w n Mine a t Capleton, later known as the Eustis Mine. In the negotiations for the purchase of this mine, Eustis engaged W. E. C. Eustis, Pioneer i n Nickel Industry the services of R. M. Thompson, a graduate of the United States Naval Academy who had resigned from the naval service to study law. When a new company, the Orford Copper & Nickel Company, was formed in July, 1878, Thompson became general manager, thereafter occupying himself with mining, smelting, and refining and in due course becoming a prominent figure in the nickel industry. As work progressed, production of nickel was discontinued and the company became a producer of copper only. In 1881Thompson, for the Eustis company, purchased land and erected a smelter and refinery a t Bayonne, N. J., with the assistance of Henry M. Howe, E. D. Peters, and John L. Thomson. For some time the company continued to work on Eustis ores, but soon copper ores began to appear for refining on the Atlantic seaboard from mines in the West and before long the use of ore from Capleton was discontinued. A t this juncture Thompson took over the
Orford works a t Bayonne, temporarily associating himself with W. A. Clark, of Montana. News of important discoveries of copper ore near Sudbury, Ontario, reached Thompson in 1885, and he determined to investigate. In 1881, in the construction of its lines from Sudbury around the north shore of Lake Superior, the Canadian Pacific Railroad uncovered an outcrop of copper ore. Samuel J. Ritchie, a Cleveland manufacturer, also heard of the discovery and secured options on some of these new copper mines. Already interested with Senator H. B. Payne in the Hastings Iron Mines and the Central Ontario Railway of Canada, which were in a state of suspended animation, Ritchie saw a chance, by the development of these copper properties, to recoup their losses. On January 6, 1886, in Cleveland, Ohio, the Canadian Copper Company was organized. This newly formed company made an arrangement with Thompson to furnish him 100,000 tons of copper ore. On May 1, 1886, mining was started and in October of that year the first ore was shipped to the Orford Copper Company a t Bayonne. The metal extracted from this ore, however, was not the customary copper, but on analysis was found to contain nickel, making an unsalable product. The Canadian Copper Company, upon being informed of this, a t once started a smelter near the mines in Canada. Their difficulty, however, lay in refining the matte, as little w a s k n o w n o n the metallurgy of copper-nickel s e p a r a t i o n , a necessary sequel to secure marketable products. I n t h a t year t h e w o r l d ’ s production of nickel was about 1000 tons, produced principally b y t h e F r e n c h Societit le Nickel, which dominated the market, a n d J o s e p h Wharton, pioneer in nickel i n America, w h o h a d a refinery i n C a m d e n , c o l . Robert M. Thompson, Proprietor N, J. The Canadian of the Orford Copper Company mines were able t o produce in matte double the world’s requirement, indicating not only the necessity of solving the copper-nickel separation problem, but finding substantial new uses for the metal. German silver manufacture, coinage alloys, and nickel plating
