VOL.4, No. 2
CHEMICAL DIOEST
240
support of primary, grammar and public high schools almost $2,000,000,000, or a per capita expense of $16.25 for every resident. This was almost five times as much as was spent for the same purpose in 1900. Nor do these figures include the amounts spent for parochial schools, seminaries, colleges, academies, and other private institutions of learning most of which are endowed or otherwise self-supporting. Were these schools taken into account the gross amount spent in the United States annually for education would approximate $3,500,000,000 spread over some 264,000 school buildings wherein is offered instruction to about 25,000,000 pupils daily. Two facts about the school figures compiled by the Industrial Conference Board are of exceptional interest; that the far West is outstripping other parts of the country in the amount spent per capita for public schools and that the South lags behind. California spent in 1924, $159.35 per child of school age and Nevada and Wyoming followed in order. Oklahoma spent $46.04 per child and Arkansas only $15.85.
One of the most rapidly growing groups of industries in the United States is that based on chemical science. For instance, in 1914 we imported almost 46,000,000 pounds of dyestuffs and produced 6,600,000 pounds. I n 1925, by contrast, our imports were 5,300,000 pounds and our production was 86,000,000 pounds. Recent figures show that whereas in 1914 the output of our principal chemical industries was $4,800,000,000, in 1923 it was $11,732,000,000, an increase of about 144 per cent. There are now more than 1,000,000 persons employed in these industries. One of the most interesting divisions of chemical engineering is the manufacture of pyrolin plastics of which celluloid is the best known. Although the output in 1914 was $13,895,800 this increased t o $77,477,000 in 1919. With rubber substitutes, viscose and other plastics included, the total value of all plastics produced in this country in 1923 was $102,229,807. Figures also indicate that electrochemical methods of manufacture are becoming constantly more popular. The output in 1914 was worth only $29,661,949 but in 1923 the value jumped t o $107,230,789. Industry is embarking on a period of research, a study of how t o cut cost and operate more smoothly. Chemistry is coming more and more to be recognized as the great essential science.
ANNIVERSARIES OF SCIENCE Recently Science Semite has added a new department headed, "Today in Science," in which the anniversaries of important steps in the history of science are noted. Among them we find the following:
The fist of Hertz' papers establishing the similarity between light and electric waves was presented before the Berlin Academy of Sciences on November 19, 1887. The following quotation is taken from Mills, "The Realities of Modern Science:" I n 1873 Maxwell, who was a prominent physicist, highly trained in the use of mathematical tools, announced that light was an electrical phenomenon and traveled as an electromagnetic wave. He further stated the possibility of there being other electromagnetic waves which would not produce the effect of light but would travel j u s t a s light waves travel. I n 1887 Hertz verified this prophecy of Maxwell and announced the discovery of electromagnetic waves. Hertz studied their properties or characteristics. He showed how they could he produced, how they traveled through the walls of buildings and were not affected by obstacles which would completely obstruct the passage of light, and also how they muld he detected, since they do not affect the eyes as does light.
Rontgen rays were discovered November 8, 1895. In an "Interview with Professor Rontgen," by H. J. W. Dam in McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, page 413, is quoted: I was working with a Crookes' tuhe covered by a shield of blaek cardboard. A piece of barium platino-cyanide paper lay on the bench there. I had been passing a current thmugh the tube, and I noticed a peculiar black line across the paper. What of that? The effect was one which could only be produced in ordinary parlance, by the passage of light. No light could come from the tube because the shield which mvered i t was impervious t o any light known, even that of the electric arc. And what did you think? I did nut think; I investigaterl. I assumed thnt the effcct must have come from the tube, since its chxract~rindmted it could have come from nowhere else. I t c ~ t r dit. I n a few minutes there was no doubt about it. Rays were coming from the tuhe, which had a luminescent effect upon the paper. It seemed a t first a new kind of light. I t was clearly something new, something unrecorded.
The last of Hertz' researches on the relation between light and electric waves was presented before the Berlin Academy of Sciences on December 13, 1889. Quoting Sir Oliver Lodge in his paper on "The Modern Theory of Light," published in the University College Magazine, July, 1889: I t is light, just as good as any other light. It travels a t the same pace, i t is reflected and refracted according to the same laws; every experiment known to optics can he performed with this etherial radiation electrically produced, and yet you cannot see it. Why not? For no fault of the light, the fault (if there he a fault), is in the eye. . . These electro-magnetic waves have long been known on the side of theory, hut interest in them has been immensely quickened by the discovery of a receiver or detector for them. The greatest though simple discovery by Hertz of an "electric eye" as Sir W. Thompson calls it, makes experiments on these waves for the first time easy or even
.
possible. We have now a sort of artificial sense organ for their appreciation, an electric arrangement which can virtually "see" these intermediate rates of vibration.
On December 15, 1859, Gustav Kirchhoff communicated t o the Berlin Academy of Sciences the principle that glowing vapors absorb the same radiations that they emit, thus accounting for Fraunhofer lines in the solar spectrum. According t o Frank Schlesinger in his "Astronomy in the Development of the Sciences," The spectroswpe was turned to the sun and some of the innumerable dark lines in its spectrum were mapped by Fraunhofer. But i t was not until 1859 that Kirchhoff and Bunsen found the key to these lines; they showed that most of them are caused by ahsorption in the very shallow and comparatively cool atmosphere of the sun. Each element has its characteristic lines which appear wherever the absorption takes place whether in the laboratory, in the sun or elsewhere. Here then is a means of analyzing the sun in the chemist's sense. It is found that almost all wmmon elements that we find a t the surface of the earth are also plentiful in the sun.
Prof. Samuel F. B. Morse, on December 16, 1842, in testing out his telegraphic system in Washington, so arranged his wires along the banks of the river as to cause the water itself to conduct the electricity across. The current was carried across the canal and a few feet down the bank by wires and then back by the water of the canal. This was the first telegraphy withput wires. On December 16, 1902, Marconi dispatched the first wireless message across the Atlantic Ocean. Orville Wright flew the first heavier-than-air machine for the first time on December 17, 1903. I n a paper read before the American Association for the Advancement of Science, December 30, 1903, on "Aerial Navigation," 0. Chanute says: Practical efficiency was acquired by the Wright brothers, whose flying machine was successfully tested on the 17th of December. For three years they experimented with gliding machines.. . .and i t was only after they had obtained thorough wmmand of their movements in the air that they ventured to add a motor. How they accomplished this must be reserved for them to explain, as they arc not yet ready t o make known the wnstmction of their machine nor its mode of operation.
Sir Humphry Davy was born on December 17, 1778. Bolton in his "Famous Men of Science" says: His first experiments were the effects of acids and alkalies on vegetable colors, the kind of air in the vesicles of wmmon seaweed, and the solution and precipitation of metals. These were made in his bedroom in Mr. Tonkin's house, or in the kitchen when he required fire. This old gentleman had brought up his mother and her two orphan sisters, and now was like a father to Humphry. He said, "This boy, Humphry, is incorrigible.
Was there ever so idle a dog1 He will hlow us all into the air." He was a t this time probably making a detonating composition, which he called "thunder power," his sister Kitty being hisassistant.
James Watt obtained the first of his four patents for a steam engine on January 5, 1769. T. C. Bridges in "The Young Folk's Book of Invention" says: Wheo Watt grew up he became an instrument maker a t Glasgow University and i t was here that a model of Newcomen's steam pump was brought to him one day for repair. This engine.. . .wasted steam in a shocking fashion, for since a t every stroke cold water was driven into the cylinder to condense the steam, most of the energy of each f m h inrush of steam was wasted in reheating the cvlinder. Watt resolved t o find some way 01 preventing thti waste, and for two whole ywrs spent nearly all his sparc t m r i n purrlmg out the problem. . . .As he was takina a walk one fine Sunday in 1765, suddcnly. ns hc says himaelf, "the whrle thin^ was arranged in my mind." His at idea wns to connect to the working- cylinder a vrssel into which the stram could heexhausted lor condensation so that it would he possible to keep the cylinder itself constantly hot. ~
Francis Bacon was born January 22, 1560 or 1561. I n Sedgwick and Tyler's "A Short History of Science," we find the following: Bacon, because of his official position and immense philosophical and literary ability, was able t o draw universal attention to the methods of science and especially to the method of investigation of induction, so that his indirect service to science was great. Bacon's true place in science was, however, well understood by his contemporaries, for one of the greatest, Harvey, discoverer of the circulation of the blood, remarks that, "the Lord Chancellor writes of science like-a Lord Chanke1lar."-Sedgwick and Tyler: A Short History of Science.
Robert Boyle, "Father of Chemistry," was born January 26, 1627. In his book "The Sceptical Chymist" he writes: Me thinks the Chymists in their search after truth are not unlike the navigators of Solomon's Tarshish Fleet, who brought home from their long perilous voyages not only gold and silver and ivory but apes and peacocks too; far so the writings of several (I say not all) of your hermetick philosophers present us, together with diverse substantial and noble experiments, theories which, either like peacocks' feathers, make a great show, but are neither solid nor useful, or else like apes, if they have some appearance of being rational, are blemished with same absurdity or other that, when they W. R. W. are attentively considered, makes them appear ridiculous.
Sunlight Found Not So Good for Fish. The ultra-violet radiation in sunshine may be a great help t o birds and beasts and man but fish fail t o appreciate these invisiblerays. Experiments undertaken a t a Vermont hatchery and just reported to the U. S. Bureau of Fisheries, definitely establish that sunlight is harmful rather than helpful t o fish.. Almost twice as many young fish died in troughs of water exposed t o direct sunlight as those in troughs left in the shade, experts found. The experiments were repeated with different ages and different species with sometimes an even greater mortality in the unshaded troughs, it is stated.-Scimce Senice
