March 20, 1923
INDUSTRIAL AND ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY
BIG INTERSECTIONAL MEETING MAY 4 AND Groups Cooperating in t h e Chemical Bulletin t o Gather a t Urbana, 111. A large intersectional meeting will be held at Urbana, 111., May 4 and 5, with President E. C. Franklin and Prof. The Svedberg as principal guests and speakers. All of the sections cooperating in the publication of the Chemical Bulletin have been invited to participate in the meeting. These are the Chicago, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Iowa, Ames, Louisville, Nebraska, Kansas City, Illinois, Purdue and Arkansas sections. C. D. Hurd is the chairman of arrangements for the meeting. A preliminary program has been prepared and it assures those who will attend a busy, interesting and enjoyable time. Besides the two distinguished men mentioned, it is possible that Prof. A. F . Holleman, of the University of Amsterdam, will be a guest. According to the preliminary program the meeting will open at 2 o'clock on Friday afternoon with a general meeting. Following a short introductory talk by W. A. Noyes will be addresses by Dr. Svedberg and probably by Prof. Holleman. At 4 o'clock a program of outdoor sports at the Urbana Country Club has been arranged. Dr. Franklin wiii give a short talk at 8.30, Friday evening, which will be followed by an entertainment prepared by the Department of Chemistry. • A t 8 o'clock Saturday morning Dr. Franklin will address the meeting on "The Ammonia System of Compounds." Following a social hour the following group meetings will begin, at 10 o'clock: Educational, Prof. Hopkins, Secretary; Industrial, Prof. Parr, Secretary; Organic, Prof. Adams, Secretary; General, Physical and Inorganic, Prof, Rodebush, Secretary. A t noon, the visitors will attend the Phi Lambda Upsilon luncheon and smoker, and at 2 P.M., there will be an inspection trip about the university and the cities of Urbana and Champaign.
PRIESTLEY MEDAL The award of the Priestley Medal has been postponed until the Milwaukee Meeting owing to unavoidable business which prevents Dr. Remsen, the recipient, from attending the New Haven Meeting.
Opportunity for Research Work Conditions of appointment to the Research Graduate Assistantships maintained by the Engineering Experiment Station of the University of Illinois are described in a circular sent out by M. S. Ketchum, dean of the College of Engineering and director of the experiment station. The graduate assistants- devote half of their time to engineering research and the other half to graduate study. Dean Ketchum says that applications for appointment to these positions should be sent to him at Urbana, 111., by April 1. Application blanks will be furnished by him upon request. Reduce Price of Conveyor The Link-Belt Co., Chicago, has recently announced a reducLioii in the price of their portable belt conveyor and that they have been able to put this machine on a quantity production basis.
Ten Years' Work t o Ride in Sleeper Arthur D. Little sends the following paragraph from a letter just received from a Danish engineer traveling in Germany: "It might interest you to know that a German chemist before the Great War had a yearly salary of Mk. 3,000— and to-day a sleeping car costs Mk. 30,000—for one night."
DR. ROSENHAIN TO GIVE THREE LECTURES AT URBANA Urbana, 111.—Walter Rosenhain, F.R.S., will address the meeting of the section on the subject: "Metallurgical Research at the National Physical Laboratory, Teddington, England," March 20. Two other addresses, on March 21 and 22, will be given under the auspices of the local section. Titles of the second and third lectures are "The Structure and Constitution of Alloys," and "Strain, Its Relation to and Fracture of Metals." Dr. Rosenhain was born in 1875, in Melbourne, Australia, educated at Wesley College, Melbourne, and the University of Melbourne (Civil Engineering), spent three years at St. John's College, Cambridge, holding a scholarship, where he studied metallurgy. He was technical adviser to Chase Brothers, Birmingham, until 1906, specializing on problems of optical glass. In 1906 he was appointed Superintendent of the Metallurgical Department of the British National Physical Laboratory, which position he has held since. The National Physical Laboratory is an institution corresponding in a general way t o the U. S. Bureau of Standards. It is located at Teddington, near London, and has a noteworthy record of achievement. During the war its contributions, both to the cause of the allies and to the science of metallurgy and
JAPAN OFFERS MARKET FOR NEW RAT POISON Something Wanted W h i c h Will Exterminate Rodents w i t h o u t B e i n g Harmful t o H u m a n B e i n g s Any American manufacturer of a rat eradicator which would be comparatively harmless for human beings and at the same time* effective, would have the support both of the Japanese police and health authorities and if he were willing to spend a reasonable sum for advertising or could induce an agent to do so, would have a good market in Japan, says James F. Abbot, Commercial Attache at Tokio, in a report to the Department of Commerce. "Neko-irazu" (lit. "do without cats'"), a sort of Japanese "Rough on Rats," is freely sold and it is claimed that the annual sales amount to half a million yen ($250,000), but the use of this poison as a means of suicide has become an increasingly serious problem in Japan. A recent issue of a vernacular newspaper claimed on "authoritative sources" that 5000 persons committed suicide in Japan during the year 1922 by taking neko-irazu. That may not be wholly true, but accounts of such things are published frequently in the local newspapers and a strong sentiment is boing expressed in some quarters agamst the free sale of the poison. -The basic toxic element in the neko-irazu is phosphorus with a base of wheat flour and a little meat extract as lure. Should the authorities forbid the sale of this particular rat poison, a rather serious situation--will be created, for the rat is a great pest in Japan, doing a large-amount of damage and is feared as a carrier of plague. Speaks o n "Corrosion" On February 21st, R. B. Wilson, Director of Research of the Standard Oil Company, Whiting, Indiana, spoke to the Northern Indiana Section on "The Mechanism of the Corrosion of Iron and Steel."
materials testing, were immense and the departments of metallurgy and its superintendent bore their full share in this work. Especially noteworthy work was done in developing light and string alloys of aluminum and magnesium, and in the study of the metallurgy of alloy steels.—H. C. KRAMERS, Correspondent.
Four Lectures at Ann Arbor Four lectures of interest to chemists and chemical engineers were given at the University of Michigan last week. The first, on March 13, was "The Electron at Work," by J. E. Harris of the Western Electric Company. The other three were: March 14, "Structure and Constitution of Alloys," by Dr. Walter Rosenhain; March 15, "Strain and Fracture in Metals," by Dr. Rosenhain; and March 16, "Aluminum Alloys," by Dr. Rosenhain. The lecture by Dr. Harris was under the auspices of the American Chemical Society. The three by Dr. Rosenhain were University Lectures. Joins Bakelite Staff After 26 years of service with the Solvay Process and SemetSolvay Companies, in Syracuse, N. Y., Alexis C. Houghton has resigned his position as chief chemist. He is to enter service of the Bakelite Company of New York and will have charge of its synthetic phenol plant.
