Chemical Education Today
From Past Issues
International Journal or Small-Town Newspaper? by Kathryn R. Williams
The inaugural issue of JCE numbered only 20 pages. (Actually, “contained” would be a more accurate word. The February 1924 JCE started with page 21. I dutifully verified that the January issue—sans page numbers—accounted for the first 20.) The editorial staff devoted three pages of January’s skinny magazine to Local Activities and Opportunities. The monthly feature printed tidbits submitted from around the country. For example, readers in January 1924 learned about recent gatherings of the New England and Maryland Associations of Chemistry Teachers, Russell Jenkins’ research work in Grignard’s lab in Lyon (Jenkins was a graduate fellow at the University of Illinois), professional service activities of Richard C. Tolman (Cal Tech) and Alexander Silverman (University of Pittsburgh), several fellowships, and a recently marketed collection of portraits of famous American chemists— “suitable for framing”. For almost four years the heading served as sole introduction to each month’s collection of choice morsels. Supposedly, the section helped satisfy a goal listed in Neil Gordon’s first Editor’s Outlook (J. Chem. Educ. 1924, 1, 2): “To keep the teacher and student in closer touch with cur-
Contests Revisited Only one brave soul responded to last April’s challenge. To refresh everyone else’s memory, From Past Issues reprinted a diagram from the What Is Wrong Here? series of 1929 and 1930. The picture showed a faulty laboratory set-up for the synthesis of nitric acid. The contest also asked for suggestions for the identities of “chlorazene” and the “corrosive sublimate”, used in the Spriggins’ family hen house in the skit Chemistry Saves the Day. Concerning the diagram, Zeb Rike III, Senior Chemist at DuPont’s Orange, TX plant wrote: “They would have used concentrated sulfuric acid and sodium nitrate to make nitric acid. Hydrochloric acid and sodium nitrate would have given aqua regia, or nitrosyl chloride, not nitric acid. Rike remembered the henhouse chemical from his childhood days: “…corrosive sublimate” is mercuric chloride. I grew up in a drugstore, and when I was a teenager, ‘corrosive sublimate’ was still used in some antiseptic uses. Regarding “chlorazene”, yours truly paid a visit to the library and found the chemical listed in several old Merck Indexes, which referred the reader to chloramine-T (ptoluenesulfonchloramide). According to the 6th edition of the Merck Index (1952, p 224), the medical uses of the compound included: “1 or 2% solns. as antiseptic for irrigating or dressing wounds or 0.1 to 0.2% soln. for application to mucous membranes.” My new saying is, “You learn something old every day.”
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rent opportunity furnished by the American Chemical Society and other scientific organizations and institutions.” Communication within the chemical education community was always an important issue and in October 1928 the aims of Local Activities and Opportunities were delineated in a preamble which is reproduced in the supplementary material.W Understandably, early editors refrained from including items appearing in the Local Activities section in the annual index. So history and gossip buffs, like myself, must take time to look through old JCEs, issue by issue, if we want to learn about past goings-on in our departments and ACS sections. I spent a few hours with this diversion and found several reports from the University of Florida. The earliest dates back to April 1924 (J. Chem. Educ. 1924, 1, 82), when Townes R. Leigh, “Head of the Department of Chemistry …was elected as first chairman of the newly formed section of the American Chemical Society.” I appreciated learning this item of history, but I definitely felt richer after reading memorable tidbits such as: “The NeoChemto-Ion, official publication of the Northeastern Ohio Chemistry Teachers Organization, after running through seven issues in mimeographed form, now appears as a full-fledged product of the printer’s art.” (J. Chem. Educ. 1928, 5, 900); “…a loving cup was presented by Alpha Gamma chapter to the department of chemistry of Wake Forest College. On it will be engraved each year the name of the freshman making the highest grade in chemistry” (J. Chem. Educ. 1930, 7, 1213); and “The talking motion picture was exhibited as an educational device for the first time [at an NEA convention in Atlantic City]…Maps were exhibited which take advantage of the recent events in aviation for bringing geography up to date” (J. Chem. Educ. 1930, 7, 939). The Journal’s bulletin board for hometown postings never lacked for contributions. For example, Local Activities filled 19 pages of the June 1930 issue. In August of that year, the editors started a subsection for foreign news, mostly reports extracted from other journals. If you find such use of Journal space of dubious value, you are not alone. Due to readers’ comments in January 1931 that “the space …could be put to better use,” Neil Gordon’s editorial announced that “we are substituting…a section devoted to Contemporary News in Chemistry and Education. …Items of purely local interest will be omitted” (J. Chem. Educ. 1931, 8, 5). However, Gordon’s intentions seem to have been ignored. The Contemporary News sections in 1931 and early 1932 showed little attempt to conserve space and reported items no less parochial than those in its predecessor. Numerous photographs added eye appeal, but I wonder how many readers benefitted from the reproductions of floor plans for science buildings at a dozen or so universities. Then in May 1932 Contemporary News came to an unheralded end. I found no editorial comments about the absence from the remaining 1932 issues. But in August, editor
Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 76 No. 11 November 1999 • JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu
Chemical Education Today
Gordon wrote that the “Chemical Foundation is no longer able to continue its generous donations” and that the new budget “included every possible economy which does not entail drastic damage to the publication” (J. Chem. Educ. 1932, 9, 1315). Contemporary News must have fallen early victim of the cost-cutting ax, which, as I noted in my poetic musings last May (see J. Chem. Educ. 1999, 76, 599), struck definitively the following January. Local Activities and Contemporary News remain valuable sources of anecdotal information from the 1920s and early 1930s. If you need a short opener for a departmental or ACS get-together, try paging through Volumes 1–9. Even if you don’t find anything about your local group, you are
sure to read many humorous or thought-provoking items along the way.
If something from a JCE from decades past strikes your fancy, write it up for the From Past Issues page. Send your ideas or submissions to Kathryn R. Williams, Department of Chemistry, University of Florida, P. O. Box 117200, Gainesville, FL 326117200, email:
[email protected].
JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu • Vol. 76 No. 11 November 1999 • Journal of Chemical Education
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