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I N D U S T R I A L A N D ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY
(5.6 cubic meters) of gas in 7 hours. The process is about 92 per cent efficient; i. e., about 92 per cent of the formic acid is cracked t o carbon monoxide and water. The rest distils without cracking and is lost in the condensate from D. This consumption of acid agrees closely with Hutton and Petavel’s requirement of 133 pounds of 90 per cent acid t o produce 1000 cubic feet of gas. The process is continuous and the only materials expended are formic acid and electricity for the heating coils. These items represent a cost of 2.5 cents per cubic foot of gas. The phosphoric acid baths apparently can be used indefinitely.
Vol. 21, No. 4
There is, of course, some health hazard in handling large quantities of carbon monoxide of high purity, particularly when the gas is under pressure. The small room which houses the generator and the compressor is eguipped with a large ventilating fan, independent of the main ventilation system for the laboratory. Nevertheless, the operator must exercise due caution, particularly when the compressor is in use and in handling cylinders of compressed gas. Apparatus for artificial resuscitation and tanks of oxygen are maintained in readiness for emergencies, but t o date have not been needed.
AMERICAN CONTEMPORARIES Winthrop Carver Durfee HILE attending a meeting of the in AMERICANCHEMICALSOCIETY Boston, about thirty years ago, I engaged in casual conversation with a fellow member, who soon impressed me with his keen interest in telling of his experiments on the mordanting of wool. Furthermore, I was greatly attracted by the twinkle which came into his eyes from time to time as he described the results of his work. I soon learned that the gentleman was Mr. Durfee, and this chance meeting proved to be the beginning of a friendship which has continued with an increasing interest ever since. Winthrop Carver Durfee, one of the eleven children of Walter Chaloner Durfee and Jane Frances (Alden) Durfee, was born in Fall River, Mass., April 23, 1858. His father was a Quaker, a treasurer of a cotton mill and a bank president. Mr. Durfee has always been proud of his colonial ancestry, and his atWinthrop tractive home in Jamaica Plain is of a dignified type of colonial architecture and typifies this feeling from the front gate to the well-kept garden in the rear. Mr. Durfee was educated in the public schools of Fall River, and a t Brown University, Providence, R. I., where he was a member of the society then known as Chi Phi. After graduating from college in 1878, he worked in his father’s cotton mill in Fall River. He has often said that his ability to hang his legs on a bench and talk to his fellow mill hands was very valuable to him. In 1881 he started in business in Boston and was married to Sylvie Whitney, of Pawtucket, R. I., the cousin of his college roommate. He made his home in Jamaica Plain, Mass., where he has resided ever since. He was for a time a salesman for the St. Denis Dyestuff Company and then for Thomas Leyland Company. This led to his establishment under his own name as an independent chemist and purchasing agent, advising his friends in the mills as to their needs and securing the wanted supplies including such things as dyewoods, dyes, waxes, dextrin, etc. Practical experience led him to recognize the value of tartrates of certain qualities in wool-dyeing. This became the central feature of his business and laboratory, where thousands of dyeings were made to illustrate the action of his tartar products in connection with wooldyeing. No number of experiments was too great for him to undertake to solve a casual question of a prospective customer.
After the beginning of the World War he established a small factory for the making of special mordants for cotton, leather, viscose, real silk, etc., including one or more varieties of the common chromate mordants. Because of his concentration on tartar he was sometimes styled by his friends “The Tartar King.” Until 1900 he did all his laboratory work in the kitchen, to the entertainment and occasional consternation of his family when dyes went astray. Aside from business he was a t one time much interested in the Church Temperance Society and gave much of his time to it. He is a Thirty-second Degree Mason and has studied the history of Masonry as well as that of primitive Greek, Babylonian, and Egyptian religions. His outstanding characteristics are loyalty to family, college, and associations with which he is connected, his generosity, his patience, C. Durfee foresight, his wide fund of information, and his love of a joke. Mr. Durfee always went to Fall River for his father’s and mother’s birthdays and has continued the custom ever since his father’s death in 1902 and his mother’s in 1907, except for his mother’s, October 4 of last year when illness prevented. He is a member and ex-president of the Drysalters Club, the Engineers Club of Boston, the American Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists, the Boston Art Club, the AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY,and various other organizations, and councilor of the Northeastern Section of the AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETYsince 1919. When the American Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists was organized in 1921, Mr. Durfee was one of those most interested, and took an active part in its formation. He was elected treasurer a t that time, an office which he has filled with credit and efficiency ever since. He is also a member of the research committee of that association. Always a prominent figure at the general meetings of the AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETYand the Textile Chemists and Colorists Association, ready to help, not only with his financial support, but with the more valuable assistance of time and hard work, Mr. Durfee has won a warm place in the hearts of his fellow workers who know him most intimately. LOUISA. OLNEY
