Origin
of
'Bakélite"
ΠΡΙΙΕΗΕ is much need for a better understanding of our patent system. Even intelligent and otherwise well-informed people believe that patents are granted in perpetuity. They have no idea that the great majority of our patents have ex pired and are expiring daily. An inventor buys his patent from the Government b y disclosing his invention. The disclosure is the consideration for which the patent is granted so that the advance he has contributed in the art is dedicated to public use upon the expiration of the patent. Every patent is a contribu tion to the sum of human knowledge. Among many examples that could be cited is L . H. Baekeland's now famous re search which resulted in the first successful process for the commercial production of phenol-formaldehyde resin. Baekeland's research permitted control of the proper ties of the product—the original Bakélite resin—at all stages of reaction and condensation. Few will deny that the influence of this research and its outcome in the world of materials and product design have been far-reaching. It greatly stimulated scientific interest and activity in the general subject and possibilities of synthetics, thus giving rise t o further discoveries in this little-explored domain. Thirty-five years before Doctor Baekeland began his research in 1906, Adolph Baeyer had observed and written about the behavior of phenols and aldehydes when heated together. Twenty years after Baeyer, another scientist, Kleeburg, experimented with the same materials. Both Baeyer and Kleeburg devoted much effort t o the attempted production of an artificial shellac base, but they failed. The substance they made was a shapeless, inert, hard, insoluble, seemingly useless mass, incapable of being formed, and so porous a s to be worthless even if it could be worked. Baekeland, too, sought a shellac base, and found a sirupy resin which heat-hardened into a permanent solid. Unlike the products of Baeyer and Kleeburg, Baekeland's resin was dense and strong, porosity having been prevented by the simple device of maintaining air pressure in the autoclave, which suppressed foaming during t h e critical thermosetting stage of the final reaction. By studying the failures that had gone before, and supplying the necessary controlling factors, Doctor Baekeland turned to advantage the same characteristics that had defeated his German predecessors, and obtained a product, the properties of which could b e assured and stabilized at every stage of both the fluid and solid phase. Before Pearl Harbor Bakélite resins in various forms were known the world over for their wide variety of applications— telephone handsets, electrical appliance V O L U M E
2 0
NO.
24»
Plastics For your
plugs and outlets, radio cabinets, washing machine agitators, brakelinings, abrasive wheels, steel mill roll neck bearings, automotive ignition parts, and a thousand other diverse uses for peaceful living. Today, they are even more important to the war effort on land, sea, and in the air. Tomorrow, they will again play their important role in peacetime products. After 36 years, new uses for Bakélite resins are being uncovered and developed at as rapid a pace as ever. To use an old phrase, their field of service is hardly scratched.
PILOT
PLANT
or LABORATORY use
AC Ε SPHERICAL JOINTS U. S. Pat. N o . 2,190,220
Founders
9
D a y of A l p h a Chi Sigma
r^ARi, F. PRUTTON, head of the Chemical ^^^ Engineering Department at the Case School of Applied Science, was the main speaker at the Founders' Day banquet held at the Cleveland Engineering Society on December 4 by the Akron Professional, Case Collegiate, and Cleveland Professional chapters of Alpha Chi Sigma. Speaking on "The Chemical Profession and the War", Professor Prutton pointed out the increasing demands for chemically trained personnel in essential industries and outlined the steps that must be taken to ensure using chemists and chemical engineers where their training is of gréa tost value.
N e w T y p e of Scrap Drive Τ Ν HIS address accepting the Edward Goodrich Acheson Medal of the Elec trochemical Society, C. F. Burgess urged a new kind of scrap drive t o find, collect, and use the hidden treasure of scientific discoveries laid aside and forgotten in laboratories, libraries, and old reports and records.
H e a t Flow through W e t
Walls
H. DEARBORN, dean of the School of • Engineering at Oregon State College, Corvallis, and F. C. Mcintosh, Pittsburgh, Penna., chairman of the Committee on Research of the American Society of Heat ing and Ventilating Engineers, announce the consummation of a cooperative agree ment to investigate the heat flow through wet building walls. The research program will be carried on in the domestic heating laboratory of the College at Corvallis by means of a spe cially constructed apparatus in a study jointly planned by Earl C. Willey of the college and the research committee of the Oregon Chapter of the Society, of which Edwin W. Neubauer of Portland is chair-
H
DECEMBER
2 5,
1942
Γ
ί
«-Ι*--™-
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M a d e to A C E specifications, these spherical joints w i l l m e e t y o u r performance specifications. T h e y permit considerable a n g l e c h a n g e s w i t h o u t the n e e d for c o m p l i c a t e d adjusting devices. T h e y eliminate breakage of e q u i p m e n t and j o i n t leaka g e resulting from i n a c c u rate a l i g n m e n t . It's easy to install spherical j o i n t e d e q u i p m e n t , too. J u s t a p p r o x i m a t e y o u r locat i o n s , slide t h e s e c t i o n s t o gether and clamp them. T h e A C E c l a m p c o n n e c t s the m e m b e r s s i m p l y a n d effectively. F o r final a d j u s t m e n t , align t h e parts to desired positions and tighten the clamps firmly. Write for the Ace General Catalog 40 which includes a wide selection of spherical jointed apparatus.
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