THE CHEMICAL WORLD THIS WEEK parts from diesel locomotives and axle roll bearing retainers. This method was said to be particularly effective for diesel valves, since they are made of a special heat resistant alloy, high in chromium and nickel, and will not satisfactorily take a magnetic test. Of 10,987 valves inspected by this method in one shop last year, 1.11% were found to be defective. Special applications of the four methods for testing in the aircraft industry were described by W . C. Ilitt, Douglas Aircraft Corp. Ultrasonic Detection of Flaws The first ultrasonic equipment for the automatic detection of flaws in metals is
being designed by Electrocircuits Co., D . C. Erdman reported. The machine will be used for checking jet engine turbine parts and will offer many advantages over manual ultrasonic equipment now in use by t! industry. A large number of exhibits were presented by metal fabricators, and manufacturers of welding, testing, and other equipment. The entire congress and exposition was planned with the cooperation of 20 technical societies, with technical sessions being directly sponsored by the American Society for Metals, American Welding Society, Society for Non-Destructive Testing, and American Foundrymen's Society.
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Problem-Solver Katharine Blodgett Wins Garvan M e d a l "^fov have to like problems." •*- "Solving problems is a habit." So says Katharine Blodgett, w h o will receive the 1951 Women's Award in Chemistry (Garvan Medal) at the ACS Meeting in Cleveland this week. When you see "Katie" Blodgett bustling about her laboratory at the General Electric research laboratories tossing good-natured but imperious instructions over her shoulder, you involuntarily expect her to pull a crackling turkey from an oven or throw a couple of sticks of wood into a cookstove. On the other hand if you meet her in her 100-year-old kitchen carefully experimenting with ingredients for popovers you know immediately that here is a scientist at work. Wherever you find her you can be sure she is enjoying herself. The secret is of course that like any good N e w Englander she enjoys a challenge. She likes problems and has made solving them a habit. Her first problem was basic. She was a woman. In 1918 when Katharine B. Blodgett received an M.S. from the University of Chicago backed up by a B.S. from Bryn Mawr, a woman scientist was not considered so much a rarity as an impossibility. However, with an assist from a 'wartime labor shortage and friends of her late father, the former head of GE's patent department, she became the first woman in the GE research laboratories. Chance cast her as assistant to Irving Langmuir, w h o was then beginning his studies of monomolecular films. Katie grabbed onto the problem and is still hanging on. Dr. Langmuir has described her as "a gifted experimenter w h o works in simple and direct ways . . . working out
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her own experimental methods." Dr. Blodgett, self-described chemist by adoption, is a physicist by training; an experimenter by inclination. It is her extremely effective common-sense approach to experimental work that has made her such an effective coworker to Dr. Langmuir, himself an experimental scientist working under the administration of W. R. Whitney, a prominent proponent of the experimental school of research. In her turn Dr. Blodgett was responsible for the introduction into Dr. Langmuir's group of Vincent Schaefer, t h e brilliant experimentalist w h o perfected the technique of inducing precipitation artificially. As early as 1924 Katie's work attracted favorable attention. In that year she was granted permission to study under Sir Ernest Rutherford at the Cavendish Laboratories at Cambridge. After two years of continuous chill in the old quadrangle buildings she returned to the United States with the first doctorate in physics ever awarded to a woman by that august institution. Since that time Dr. Blodgett has acquired decorative doctorates from Elmira College, Western College, Brown University, and Russell Sage College. The first practical fruits of Dr. Blodgett's intensive studies of thin films came in 1938 when GE introduced "invisible" glass based on the Blodgett technique for depositing successive monomolecular layers on glass by picking them u p from the surface of a water bath. The development made Dr. Blodgett one of the best known women scientists in the country. During the succeeding period of radio interviews and women's magazine features she pro-
CHEMICAL
I Ml ISTRV Another Move M a d e i n Monsanto's $22 Million Program Monsanto Chemical Co. is negotiating for the purchase of a 115-acre site and several buildings in Addyston, Ohio, as a midwestern center for production and distribution of plastics. T h e new plant will b e operated as part of the company's plastics division under the direction of F . A. Abbiati, division general manager. The division's headquarters plant is in Springfield, Mass.
ceeded to perfect a thickness-comparison gage composed of stepwise deposits of one microinch films o n a folaclc glass base. The various interference colors produced by the different film thicknesses can b e compared with those produced by an unknown film and the thickness determined within one microinch. With that problem under control and the gages in production sHe has currently turned to the development of a material of very high electrical resistance composed of lead glass lieated in an atmosphere of hydrogen. Such treatment produces a thin surface film which has a low conductivity that is stable at very high voltage gradients. All of this important work has been done at an old battered desk o r perched on a scarred wooden stool. T m e to her Maine ancestry Katie has a n aflection for old familiar furnishings and Has determinedly had her furniture and equipment moved from laboratory to laboratory. In the steel and glass surroundings of the new GE building they seem somewhat out of place until complimented by the comfortable face and well-modulated voice of their owner by adoption. When she leaves the desk Katie carries her struggle with nature to a newarena adjacent to her home. There, o n a small plot, which one of her friends says contains more fertilizer per square foot than any other ground in t h e world, the conducts an "experimental"' garden. Many of her experiments are unsuccessful but at least she k n o w s why the zinnias don't bloom or the carrots are scrubby. Summer weelc-ends s h e deserts both the lab and the garden for a "camp" on Lake George w h i c h consists of a one room cabin and an a d jacent sleeping tent. There the creed is open house as long as the guests stay out from underfoot when Katie i s cooking. On the trip u p and b a c k Katie does her own driving. She is much, happier with her o w n hands on t h e wheel.
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THE CH MICAL WORLD THIS WEEK The Ohio River plant is another unit in Monsanto's $22 million plastics expansion program, Monsanto president W. M. Rand points out. Initial operations of the new plant call for production of Lustrex styrene molding materials and Resinox phenolic resins. Installation of equipment will begin as soon as purchase negotiations are completed, with production expected early next year. The Ohio site will be purchased from the U. S. Pipe and Foundry Co. of Burlington, N. J.
Freeport Sulphur t o Drill Texas Prospect Freeport Sulphur Co. has obtained the sulfur rights on a prospect at Nash Dome in Texas and will begin exploratory drilling there in the near future, President Langbourne M. Williams, Jr., has revealed. Nash Dome, located about 35 miles south west of Houston, is the sixth Gulf Coast salt dome at which Freeport is now undertaking to find and develop sulfur. The company recently announced plans to prospect four domes in Louisiana and to build a sulfur-mining plant at another dome in that state.
Koppers Plans Pipe Coatings, Roofing Plant a t Fontana, Calif. Koppers Co., Inc., has taken an option on 158 acres of land at Fontana, Calif., and contemplates construction of a plant there for the making of enamel pipe coatings and roofing materials, it was announced by Fred C. Foy, vice president
and general manager of Koppers tar products division. The proposed site is adjacent to the Kaiser Steel Co. plant and Koppers plans to use pitch made from tar obtained from the Kaiser coke ovens, processing it into enamels for pipe coatings and various types of roofing materials. A contract with Kaiser providing an adequate supply of t h e pitch has been arranged, Mr. Foy said. If plans go through as anticipated, it will be in operation before the end of the year. "This plant would be the first of its kind to be built west of the Rocky Mountains," Mr. Foy said in announcing the Koppers expansion. "Since such plants are dependent upon tar pitch as a raw material, they usually are built near steel mills which get tar from their coke ovens. Kaiser has such a source of tar at Fontana. In the past virtually all tar enamels and roofing materials have been shipped in from the East."
N e w Plan f o r Chemical C o r f Purchasing Announced A new industrial liaison plan for procurement matters was announced recently b y Maj. Gen. Anthony C. McAuliffe, chief of the Chemical Corps, at the Boston section meeting of the Armed Forces Chemic a l Association. Under the plan, all requests for preliminary information concerning procurement contracts, allocating facilities for procurement, and procurement planning
Hagan Display Relates Calgon to Numerous Industries Relationship of chemistry to a variety of industries and to homes is suggested in H a g a n Corp.'s model city, a display set up in the company's Pittsburgh offices. Miniature chemical plant is one of the buildings shown. Displays point out the part that glassy phosphate, Calgon, plays in treating water to prevent scale and corrosion in equipment, in treating process water, and in well cleaning and water conditioning
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should be taJcen direct to the Chemical Corps Procurement District offices controlling the area in which the facility is located. The U. S. has been divided into six geographical districts with headquarters in Boston, New York, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, and Sam Francisco. Each office will maintain complete sets of drawings and specifications for standard items being procured by the Chemical Corps regardless of which olfiice is issuing the contract. This procurement plan sets up a policy mainly of end ateni buying. Purchasing responsibility ha.s been decentralized to various districts now responsible for procuring items for which they are assigned. The Boston office is purchasing individual and collective protective devices which are to be used as a defense against chemical, biolo-gical, and radiological agents. This would include gas masks, hoods, group protectors, respirators, and the like. N e w York procures flamethrowers, bleach«es, decontaminating solutions, certain types of grenades, and Napalm. Adantat contracts for white phosphorus, identification kits, and similar items. Chicago Ibuys decontamination apparatus and certain types of incendiary bombs. Dallas i s concerned with the major portion o>f ir&etal parts used in manufacturing incenciiary bombs made with magnesium and white phosphorus grenades and smoke munitions. San Francisco procures smoke generators and tear gas grenades. Aarny Chemical Center, Md., is handling procurement for Edgewood Arsenal as well as research and engineering contracts for industrial preparedness measures. I n addition to basic procurement responsibility, the district offices supervise contracts placed in their areas. To participate in the programs as a subcontractor, manufacturers should g o to those concerns awarded the prime contracts. However, there are a certain number of contracts placed which will not be for e n d items. Such awards are mainly for component parts of items to be manufactured in the Corps' own arsenals. The,Chemical Corps is obligated to obtain the fairest price possible to the Government and at the same time spread military procurement over as w i d e a basis as possible. In order to maintain competition, tr*e procurement agencies contact several known sources of supply. After bids ha*ve been submitted, including price breakdown information, the Corps negotiates a contract. A manufacturer can do his part in expediting negotiations by having the following information at hand the first time he visits a procurement office in quest for information: description of facilities; short histories of lcey personnel; security clearance of personnel and facilities, naming the agencies granting the clearance and when they -were granted; a list of other government contracts handled by the facility; and ref-erences on financial status of facility.
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