I/EC
Reports
It Happened Out West A look at some behind-the-scenes developments at the 133rd ACS Meeting in San Francisco
Sky Writing in the G r a n d Manner O n e of the San Francisco newspapers reported, during the ACS meeting, the concern of W e r n h e r von Braun, expressed to a congressional committee, that military rather t h a n civil control of space might get the upper h a n d . W e agree, of course, with D r . von Braun in his concern, but even he would probably have been "shook" at the implications, voiced in a humorous, but quite "this is entirely possible" vein by Ronald Smelt of Lockheed before the luncheon of the Division of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry. If you aren't sold on T V commercials, particularly the instantaneous, oft repeated ones currently on trial for subconscious impressions, or on skywriting commercials, how would you like to see a Coke bottle satellite, large enough to be plainly visible, a n d rotating fast enough and often enough to be a n ever-present commercial? M r . Smelt was not picking on the CocaCola Co.—he just chose a n internationally known advertising symbol as a n example—but the implications are far-reaching. Whatever the commercial applications of space flight m a y be (Lockheed among others has a program u n d e r wraps), chemistry will be at the front in contributing men, materials, and ideas.
Incredibly Fast Is Not Enough Did you ever stop to think that 6 years ago, when computers and their applications were first included on an A C S national meeting program (Boston), the entire installed capacity of computers in the U. S. was a b o u t that of the smallest and cheapest computer we have today? Average speed of computer operation has increased 100,000-fold since then, a n d Stretch, I B M ' s very high 24 A
speed digital computing system, particularly useful in solving partial differential equations, and 100 times as fast as the I B M 704, m a y be slow compared to next generation's computers. C o m p u t e r use in the chemical industry is just as fantastic a story as rockets a n d missiles. Like the weather, if they d o n ' t suit you, wait a few minutes.
Chemicals in M i n i n g Recent years have seen more chemicals used in preparing ores of conventional metals, the newer metals, and now the base materials for all varieties of nuclear operations. Some of the tonnages for nuclear materials are staggering. Right out of the bush, in the Blind River area of C a n a d a , due n o r t h of Detroit, has come a d e m a n d for 800,000 tons of chemicals per year, a n d contracts with Eldorado, the C a n a d i a n equivalent of A E C , total almost $2 billion worth of u r a n i u m concentrates. These new mills, too, are built like chemical plants, not like the older conventional ore-processing plants so familiar to the mining industry.
Exotic to Prosaic Exotic and intriguing developments always make big news. Some perhaps prosaic developments arc mighty important, too. T a k e dishwashers, for instance. Every chemist a n d chemical engineer who has one in his home finally sees the porcelain chipping a bit. A G E description of accelerated testing of coatings brings out the advantages of vinyl plastisol finishes, used in the newest G E dishwashers instead of porcelain. T a k e inks for another. National Cash Register has a new ink vehicle m a d e of PVC-acetate-alcohol copolymer a n d poly (vinyl butyral). It's particularly good for printing instructions on life rafts a n d other survival equipment. Salt water resistance is i m p o r t a n t ; so is storage
INDUSTRIAL AND ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY
life. N R C ' s new ink overcomes much of the difficulty of fading ink or inkruined fabric.
W o o d Chemicals Chemicals from wood is an activity that just comes naturally in the Pacific Northwest. Great strides have been m a d e , but market development is the real problem. In one area—antioxidants—where the supply of material could be inexhaustible, price competition with the newest petroleum-based antioxidants is tough. But new items are still interesting. Plicatic acid is one. H o t water-leached from western red cedar, a prolific timber, it is the first example of a lignan acid isolated from natural sources, and makes u p from 3 to 1 0 % of the cedar wood, an astonishingly large amount. Western red cedar, long used for sidings a n d shingles, has never been economically satisfactory for pulp because of low wood density and the corrosive action of the thujic plicins on digesters. Should plicatic acid find profitable uses, they will probably be in antioxidants, sequestering agents, and perhaps pharmaceuticals.
Polycarbonates — Attention Getter Polycarbonates got m u c h attention at San Francisco. Impressive was the transparency in comparison with such materials as M y l a r a n d T e r y l e n e . Schnell of Bayer was in from G e r m a n y , and Conix of Gevaert from Belgium, to explain their different processes. Bayer's is, in its simplest terms,' a reaction of bisphenols with phosgene; Gevaert's bisphenols with diacid chlorides. Bayer is building a plant in G e r m a n y now, with major product outlets in household appliance and electrical fields. G E is interested because of the excellent dielectric properties. M o b a y , of course, can be expected to go into the field; m a n y other U . S. companies are interested in licensing. Gevaert's major interest is in film bases, b u t the economic picture would seem to limit this use to special photographic films.
