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VOL. 16, NO. 1
INDUSTRIAL AND ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY
trated booklet, entitled "Looking Ahead," giving a brief history of the company's development, with discussion of s o n e of its more important products. So having completed 25 years of service to industry, during which there has been a wonderful growth the industrial world over, the company may well stand on the threshold of its next quarter century, peering into the future, confident that further progress will be made, that additional opportunities for service will present themselves, and that the company from sweeper to president will continue, as in the past, to beUeve in research and make the most of it in evolving their destiny. A Pioneer
in Air
Conditioning
J attention a contribution of Leo H. Baekeland to the Fifth International EROME ALEXANDER has
brought to
our
Congress of Applied Chemistry held in Berlin June 2 to 8, 1903. This paper "On the Influence of Hygrométrie Conditions of the Atmosphere in the Manufacture of Photographic Paper" describes methods employed by Dr. Baekeland as early as 1895 for air conditioning that part of his plant manufacturing photographic sensitized papers. His discussion pertained particularly to gelatin papers. After describing conditions and giving some data, we find the following:
THE ALCHEMIST by X. C. Wyeth
Hercules Silver Anniversary Year HE Hercules Powder Co. started busiT ness on January 1, 1913, with less than 1000 employees in 15 plants and offices devoting their activities to the manufacture and sale of industrial explosives. That first year the sales were about $7,000,000. The company has now completed a quarter-century of service. In 1937, with more than 7000 employees in 59 plants and offices, the sales were approximately $45,000,000, and the field of act ivity had grown in a notable fashion. The original markets served by Hercules in 1913—namely, mining, quarrying, and construction—are relatively the same today. The company's growth has come about by successfully seeking and entering new fields with new and diversified products. This has resulted from the pursuit of a wise policy. It will be remembered that 25 years ago the synthetic organic chemical industry of the United States was a mere infant. During that period we have seen the chemical industry of the country become a predominating factor in our national organism, with literally hundreds of thousands of products and processes involved and all fields of chemical activity substantially widened by chemical research and ingenuity pursued within our borders.
When the World War, with its impetus to all sorts of production, was ended, Hercules found itself with a number of highly trained and experienced men whose services it wished to retain, but whose talents could not be utilized in the pursuit of the normal industrial explosives business. Then it was that the decision was reached to engage in new enterprises. Cellulose chemistry became a major field for Hercules research and industrial activities and this has become highly diversified. The naval stores industry has become one of its active enterprises, and in certain southern states pine stumps are removed from about 150,000 acres every year to supply two Hercules wood naval stores plants. Research has developed many new commodities in this field and has shown the way to diversified utilization. Chemicals for the papermakers and for the textile industry have become important branches of the company's business, and the new field of synthetics has been entered on a considerable scale. Meanwhile the original interest in industrial explosives has continued and has had its share of research. To mark the completion of the quarter century, the company has prepared an attractive illus-
In order to overcome these disadvantageous conditions, since many years attempts have been made to use ice machinery for artificially cooling the temperature of the coating rooms. This undoubtedly facilitates the setting of gelatin emulsions, but it does not suppress the greater evil of slow drying; in fact, by reducing the temperature of the air, it will bring same nearer to the dew point. In 1895, I tried to solve this problem from another standpoint by utilizing refrigerating machinery, not for cooling but mainly for extracting the moisture from the air and precipitating it on the refrigerating coils in the state of ice. This so dried and cooled air was delivered in the coating room in a very dry condition where it was heated up again to any proper temperature by means of steam coils. My first attempts in this direction were sufficiently successful to warrant the expense of a larger installation of the kind. Since that time it has proven very successful and a similar arrangement has been adopted by several manufacturers of photographic papers. The paper concludes with discussions of details in applying his system, methods of control, and other practical features. It seems well at this juncture, when there is so much interest in air conditioning, to call attention to the fact that it appears likely that the first to make headway in the field, though not then known by this distinguishing phase, was a chemist, of whose work his fellows are very proud. AINLY because of the increased outM put of synthetic fibers in recent years, world production of carbon disulfide has more than doubled since 1929, according to reports reaching the Commerce Department's Chemical Division. A German survey indicates that world production last year aggregated 260,000 metric tons as compared with 110,000 tons in 1929, and that 90 per cent of the current output is accounted for by six countries — Germany, Japan, the United States, Italy, the United Kingdom, and France.
