CORRESPONDENCE
I
Beginnings of the Helium Industry Cady reported 0.96 per cent helium; then I took the matter up with Manning (since deceased) who immediately concerned himself with the question and did a great deal to interest Army and Navy officials. The first communication addressed to the Army and Navy Departments by the Bureau of Mines was to the Aircraft Board in May, 1917. After many conferences and McFarland and I showed that natural gases contain other inert gases, including even radon. At the 54th Meeting of the AMERICAN discussions, an appropriation of $100,000.00 was made to start CHEMICAL SOCIETY at Kansas City in 1917, C. 1%‘. Seibel. . . . prework on the Norton process. Active for the Army was Colonel sented a paper on this subject. Almost while he was reading it, war H. F. Chandler, and for the Navy G. 0. Carter, consultant on was declared and we became one of the Allies. At the end of Seibel’s gas problems. Carter later headed the Helium Board of the paper, 11. B. Moore rose and said that he knew England was seeking a source of helium for filling dirigibles. 1Vithin a few days I was Army and Navy, composed of Harry N. Davis, George Orrok, called to Washington for a conference on this subject. This conand himself. Carter was identified with the Linde Air Produets ference was attended by many able men-representatives of the Company, the only one, as Cady says, to produce helium successAllies, It. A. Millikan, the physicist, F. G. Cottrell, G . A. Burrell of fully on a large scale. the Bureau of Mines, representatives of the Linde Air Products ComSometime during the summer of 1917, R. B. Owens, of the pany, the Air Reduction Company, and others. The discussion quickly brought out the fact that a new abundant Franklin Institute and during the war an officer in the Army, source of helium-rich natural gas must be found: the wells at Dexter discussed the matter with me and said that he was going t o Engwere practically exhausted and new ones could not be drilled quickly land on official business and would like to transmit a report on our enough because a drought had greatly reduced the supply of water helium project to the British Admiralty. I prepared the report needed for drilling. We looked over a map and found a fully developed gas field around Wichita Falls, Texas, which was being piped and he took it to England. to Fort Worth and used in enormous quantities. Our isohelium Promptly two officers of the British Admiralty, Commander lines, greatly extended, indicated that this supply might contain Bridges and Lieutenant-Commander Locock, came to this counupwards of 1 per cent helium. When I returned to Lawrence, a samtry, visited me and others in Washington in October, 1917, and ple of the gas was waiting for me and I found 0.96 per cent helium. The Linde and Air Reduction companies wwe commissioned to apply then proceeded to Texas to examine the gas field of the Lone their experience in air liquefaction and fractionation to the problem Star Gas Company, which contained helium. Upon their return of separating helium from hydrocarbons, nitrogen, etc., in natural to Washington a meeting was held with Manning, members of gases. the National Defense Council, and Army and Navy officials; among them were Colonel Chandler and Captain Atkins, R. A. Twenty-one years have elapsed since the government helium Millikan, G. 0. Carter, Barrett of the Linde Company, Birg of work began, and there are probably many details which I do not the Air Reduction Company, F. G. Cottrell, Charles L. Parsons, recall, but I published the following salient facts in 1923 (1) : My then chief chemist of the Bureau of Mines, myself, and others. interest in helium was stimulated early in 1917 by a letter which Cady was also there, I am quite sure. Warren K. Lewis, proF. A. Lidbury of the Oldbury Chemical Company had received fessor of Chemical Engineering a t the Massachusetts Institute of during the war from Sir William Ramsay. Ramsay, along with Technology and at that time one of my two chief assistants on Lord Raleigh, had isolated helium and the other rare gases from war gas problems, was also present. Not long ago he and I disthe atmosphere in the early nineties. Ramsay stated in his cussed some of the incidents of the conference. letter that he was looking for a supply of helium in “gas blowers” Bridges and Locock stated that their government was preof coal mines in England for use in dirigibles. pared t o fmance the cost of extracting the helium if it could At that time I was in Washington as assistant to Van H . secure some of the helium. Not long after, our Government Manning, director of the United States Bureau of Mines, and appropriated an additional $500,000.00. Apparently this is the was formulating under Manning the work on war gases, which conference in October, 1917, which Cady attended and where it was later developed into the Chemical Warfare Service. After was decided that a new and abundant source of helium must be Lidbury’s visit with me, I kept thinking about the problem and found, After that, as he states, he looked over a map, found a wondered if a certain gas deposit in Texas, of the Lone Star Gas fully developed gas field near Wichita, Texas, extended isoCompany, which 1 had analyzed some years before for the Buhelium lines t o it, predicted t h a t the gas field contained about reau of Mines, contained helium. It had 35 per cent of nitrogen, one per cent of helium, went back to his laboratory in Kansas, I recalled, and I knew from Cady’s work, done about 1907, on found a sample of natural gas waiting for him, and determined helium in Kansas natural gas (since depleted) that a natural t h a t the sample contained 0.96 per cent of helium. gas of high nitrogen content might contain helium. Therefore, But the helium had been located long before by me, and the I asked the Lone Star Gas Company to send a sample of the gas sample to which he refers was one which the Lone Star Gas to Cady’s laboratory in Kansas. I n the meantime presumably Company sent to him at my request. I had written to Cady himself. This was how the sample of gas GEORGEA. BURRELL of which Cady speaks arrived a t his laboratory. Leslie Denning, then and now president of the Lone Star Gas Company, will BURRELL-MASE ENQINEERINQ COMPANY remember these circumstances as will Paul Gauge of t h a t com50 BROADWAY, NEW YORIC, N. Y. pany. August 25, 1938
SIR: The article on helium by H. P. Cady in the August issue of INDUSTRIAL AND ENGINEERINQ CHEMISTRY (%) does not present the facts, as I know them, regarding the Government’s initiation of its helium program. Cady states:
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INDUSTRIAL AND E N G I N E E R I N G CHEMISTRY
SIR: The existing documents show the following chronology bearing on the use of helium for aircraft. (I am indebted to C. W. Seibel for this material.)
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VOL. 30, NO. 12
analysis apparatus in the country a t that time, I fail to see a way in which anyone else could know that the gas contained approximately 0.96 per cent helium. We discussed the availability of gas fields all over the country in the light of what little was then known about them, referring 1915. Sir Richard Threlfall suggested the possibility of its use for this purpose ( 4 ) . to the nitrogen-helium relation that McFarland and I had worked Seibel reported that Threlfall told him that he made the suggestion out years before. The young man from the bureau’s gas laborato Sir William Ramsay and the latter passed it on t o Canada and this tory indicated that a t Petrolia, Texas, there was a large field of country. So Threlfall started the idea, but Ramsay pushed i t along. rather high-nitrogen gas. A glance at the map showed that, if 1919. Cottrell (3)states that Ramsay wrote t o Moore on the subject of helium February 28, 1915. (This was doubtless the letter the isohelium lines in Kansas were valid when extended across from which Moore read at the meeting of the AMERICAN CHEMICAL Oklahoma, this gas might contain about 1 per cent helium ( 9 ) ; SOCIETY in April, 1917.) Satterly and Patterson of the University of therefore I suggested we might begin the systematic search for a Toronto commenced experimentation of the subject January 1, 1916. new supply with the Petrolia gas and requested that a sample be No steps toward securing action seem t o have been taken by the United States until June 1, 1917, when Moore and Burrell called on sent t o me a t Lawrence. This was agreed upon, and a sample Colonel Chandler of the Army. The first $100,000 became availwas telegraphed for and was awaiting me when I returned to Lawable to the Bureau of Mines August 4,1917. rence. 1921. Moore (6)states that in June, 1917, the whole question was I think the matter may be summarized as follows: Burrell is brought t o the attention of Director Manning and Cottrell, and permission was given for Burrell and Moore to take the matter up with convinced that sometime in April, 1917, he took his analysis of Chandler. The Canadians actually began their experimental work the Lone Star gas for carbon dioxide, oxygen, methane, ethane, a little before we did, and in 1917 a small experimental station was and nitrogen (but not helium), which showed about 38 per cent set up in Hamilton, Ontario. In 1918 another station was estabnitrogen, and the Cady-McFarland observation that a high nilished at Calgary, Alberta. Seibel states that he finds among his records a note to the effect trogen gas often ran relatively high in helium, and guessed t h a t that Burrell wrote t o Chandler about May 12, 1917, asking if the the Lone Star gas might contain helium. I n May of the same Army would,be interested in helium for airships. Rogers’ rather year I was told of the nitrogen content of the Long Star gas, and comprehensive but by no means complete paper (6) indicates that we from the same Cady-McFarland nitrogen-helium relation and requested a sample of Petrolia pipe-line gas, and that it was collected June 13, 1917, analyzed, and found to contain 0.88 per cent our isohelium lines guessed the gas might possibly run around 1 helium. Another sample collected December 11, 1917, also a t our per cent helium. As the result of one or both of these guesses, a request, ran 0.985 per cent helium. sample of the gas was delivered t o my laboratory a few d&ysafter I had requested it. I found 0.96 per cent helium and promptly I n my paper (I) I unintentionally confused matters in my reported my findings to the Bureau of Mines. This was doubtefforts toward simplification by neglecting to state t h a t there less between May 20 and May 25, 1917, and is surely not the were two parts to the helium conference in Washington. The sample Rogers records for June 13. Thus Burrell’s guess may preliminary part took place in May. A feature story in our antedate mine, and if such an unconfirmed guess is worthy of credit University Daily Kansan, December 10, 1918, confirms this. I readily concede it to him. However, I had never heard of The telegram calling me to this meeting came after banking Burrell’s suggestion until August of this year. I was probably hours, and a check given to a neighbor for the necessary funds more surprised t o find helium in notable quantity in the Lone was cashed May 18, 1917. So the first part of the conference was Star gas than Burrell; I knew how fallible the nitrogen-helium evidently near this date. This checks well with Burrell’s comrelation was from examinations of gases running higher than 90 per munication t o Chandler on May 12. The later and larger part cent nitrogen, which contained only the barest trace of helium. I of the conference, a t which I was also present, took place in Ochave always thought of the Petrolia field as having been chosen tober, 1917, but it was at the preliminary meeting that the questhrough a laborious systematic survey of the gas fields of the tion of a new source of helium-rich gas was uppermost. entire country, carried out by the analysis of a host of samples I cannot say exactly who was present a t the preliminary consent to our laboratory. I n this survey we would inevitably have ference. Manning was there and certainly R. B. Moore and picked up the Petrolia field in the course of time. Therefore I Charles L. Parsons. I do not think Burrell was there, though had thought of my own guess about Petrolia gas merely as an he was present when the meeting reconvened in Oct,ober. At interesting example of scientific guessing confirmed-interesting the May meeting we quickly agreed as to the desirability of using because most guesses of t h a t kind are wrong. Certainly if a helium for inflating aircraft and the fundamental feasibility of richer field, such as that a t Amarillo, had been developed in separating helium from natural gas. 1917, we would have found it and Petrolia would never have been We then turned our attention to where a gas containing enough selected. Whether Burrell’s guess in April, 1917, that Petrolia helium t o be workable might be obtained in sufficient quantity. gas might contain helium should be regarded as I did mine of a The representative of the natural gas section of the Bureau of few days later, as an interesting coincidence, or as “locating the Mines pointed out that the Dexter, Kansas, wells where McFarfield” I leave to others to judge. land and I had made our original discovery were exhausted, and H. P. CADY t h a t new ones could not be drilled promptly because a drought UNIVBREITY OB KANEAS had cut short the necessary supply of water. LhWRBNCB, KANEAE The problem of a new supply was a real one. If I had analyzed October 31, 1938 any gas running 0.96 per cent helium within a month, I would Literature Cited have remembered it; and even if my client had not told me where it came from, I would have considered it my duty to my client Burrell, G. A., Chem. & Met. Eng., 29, 1013 (1923). and my country, then a t war, to put them in touch with each Cady. H. P., IND.ENG.CHEM.,30,845 (1938). other to their obvious mutual advantage. Seibel, who was then Cottrell, F. G.,Chern. & Met. Eng., 20, 104 (1919). Elsworthy, R. T., “Helium in Canada,” Dept. of Mines, my assistant, is also positive that we had not run any gas during Canada. April, 1917. Therefore I am convinced that Burrell is mistaken Moore, R. B., J. Fran k l i n Inst., 191, 145 (1921). in his supposition that I had analyzed a sample of the Lone Star Rogers, G. S.,U. S. Geol. Survey, Professional Paper 121, 106 gas before this May conference, and since we had the only helium (1921).
