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up after eating in order to digest one’s dinner-just a pill and right to bed. -4 few young people still like to go out to dance, a few hardy souls go out in the spirit of adventure, and the poor who cannot afford the modern luxuries gather a t each other’s houses as the ancients used to do, but most people after reaching middle life go to bed. The mentally lazy (and these are always a majority) select the particulsr dream isomer they desire for the night from their supply of totally harmless sleeping tablets, and go to sleep. These tablets are made in various isomers, each isomer producing some certain type of dream. Others, and this group includes our worthy member, tunein the ceiling television and “visit”where\-er they choose. On this particular night the two hundred and eighty SOCIETY is in progninth meeting of the AhfERICAN CHEMICAL ress. There is no longer any central meeting placewiththenuisance of getting there. The radio commission merely assigns a wave length, and the committee arranges a program. One doesn’t need to sit in a stuffy auditorium but simply goes to bed and tunes in. Our friend tunes in on the symposium under way, “Four Hundred Years of Chemistry in America.” The paper on the program is “The Chemistry of the Last
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Century.” Our worthy member listens to the summationthe story of the great correlations, the elimination of adolescence, the control of radio activity, the development of the contact anesthetics for war and the new fields of research they have opened, and many others of a similar sort. He knows them all well, it is somewhat tiresome to listen to, even though the speaker does a good job. However, as the paper ends, one thought lingers on in his mind-the tremendous possibilities that confronted the chemists of a century ago. Why had he not been born then? “Think of it: they gave Urey the Nobel Prize for discovering heavy hydrogen just one hundred years ago. That was really the beginning of Chemistry as a science. I have been born too late. Why, I would even be willing to sit in their stuffy auditoriums and listen to tiresome papers predicting the future of chemistry if I could only enjoy the opportunities for advancing science which were theirs.” And so to sleep. . . RECEIVED Marcb 22, 1935. Presented before the general meeting at the 89th Meeting of the American Chemical Society, New York, N. Y., April 22 t o 26. 1935.
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Scientific Foundations of American Chemical Industry
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H E X o u r pioneer foreALFRED H. WHITE and there followed the centuries of the Dark fathers built their first log Ages. The revival of knowledge came with University of Michigan, the outburst of the Renaissance which accabins in this new world, Ann Arbor, Mich. thev did not trouble with foundations but laid companied a period of free inquiry in many fields, Columbus discovered America; Rathe“1ogsdirectly on the ground. Similarly, the first chemical industries in this country three hundred years ago phael and Michelangelo reached heights still unsurpassed as had no scientific foundations. It is true that the most promicreative artists; Leonard0 da Vinci was both a wonderful nent of these pioneers, John Winthrop, Jr., was himself an artist and an extraordinary scientist; Shakespeare gave us his educated man, the possessor of a notable library of books on immortal plays. alchemy, and one who sought counsel with the most learned The scientific thinkers of the worId had been dominated by men of England. But the books and the counsels of the the philosophy of Aristotle and believed that the processes of learned can have helped him but little, The chemists three nature could be discovered by the oaerations of thought alone. Modern science commenced hundred years ago believed there were only three chemical when students discarded this principles, salt, sulfur, and mercury. When wood burned, philosophy of the Greeks and they thought it was killed. The world still had t o wait for began t o collect accurate data more than a century before the discovery of oxygen should f r o m w h i c h , later, general give some insight into the real nature of combustion. With laws were derived. If we exsuch meager knowledge and even misconceptions of the simamine this century commencplest chemical reactions, little help can have come to the chemiing with the year 1600, we cal industry from science. The early chemical manufacturer find Sir Francis Bacon w i t followed the empiric methods which had been handed down i n g h i s “Advancement of to him and, aided only by his own common sense, commenced L e a r n i n g ” i n 1605 a n d his operations. William Harvey discovering Our country is fortunate in that it was settled during that the circulation of the blood in wonderful century which has been called the “Century of 1616. Galileo died in 1642 Genius.” Before the beginning of the Christian era a small and Sir Isaac Newton was group of people had erected the Golden Age of Grecian civiliborn the same year. The age zation and through Aristotle and Plato had given expression of quantitative measurements to as noble and complete systems of thought as have ever and the correlation of cause A. H. WHITE come from the mind of man. Greece fell, Rome rose and fell,
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and effect had begun. Each building stone had to be carved and shaped with inferior tools and excessive labor. It took a century t o assemble enough blocks even to commence to erect the organized structure of science.
Recognition of Science It was not until the period of our Revolutionary War that science began to take recognized place in the world. Lavoisier in France announced the great principle that no material is gained or lost in any chemical transformation. Joseph Priestley discovered oxygen while a resident of England in 1774 but shortly afterward moved to the United States where he aided in forming the scientific foundations for our industries. Benjamin Franklin found his first employment in the chemical industry, being apprenticed to a maker of soap and candles a t the age of ten. Perhaps if he had entered the chemical industry after it had been established on a more truly scientific basis, he would have been more attracted to it but he did not like the work and afterward was apprenticed to a printer. In his later years when he was famous on both sides of the Atlantic, he took time from his duties in Paris as the ambassador of the struggling colonies to write to Priestley that “the rapid progress true science now makes occasions my regretting sometimes that I was born so soon.” In spite of the rapid scientific progress acclaimed by Franklin, chemistry was hardly more than a stumbling child even one hundred years ago. When Yale University in 1798 decided that the new subject of chemistry had progressed to a place where it should be included in its curriculum, President Dwight studied the situation and decided that it was not practicable to secure a professor already trained in this new field and that the best method was to offer the position to some young man and wait for him to become proficient in the new science. The position was offered to a graduate of Yale I‘niversity who was then about to begin the study of law. The young man was attracted to it, but, being cautious, he asked permission to finish his law course before embarking on this new career so that if the new field proved unfertile he might have the law to fall back on. Yale University agreed to this request; and four years after the appointment was tendered, this young man, Benjamin Silliman, having been admitted to the bar, started to look around and see where he could study chemistry to the best advantage. We know that catalysts are important in our social organization as well as in chemistry, and it is perhaps because of Benjamin Franklin that Philadelphia was so prominent a center of chemical knowledge that young Silliman decided, as he says in his memoirs, that “of course I must resort to Philadelphia which presented more advantages in science than any other place in the country.” He studied two periods of six months (the length of the college year) and then, having prepared himself apparently adequately, returned to Yale to commence his duties as professor of chemistry and natural history. Benjamin Silliman became a great teacher of chemistry, but the slight training which could be obtained by the young professor affords a startling contrast with our present development of undergraduate and graduate courses.
Early Status of Chemistry If we look a t the status of chemistry one hundred years ago, we find that many isolated facts had been established; that analytical chemistry had become somewhat developed, and that the first syntheses in organic chemistry had been accomplished. Chemistry had commenced to be of assistance to the chemical industry but was not yet pointing the way nor directing its progress. The chemical industry was progressing as in the past centuries, by the painful process of trial and
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error. But men were recording the results of their trials and publishing the data so that a large number of building stones were being accumulated. Before these data could be erected into scientific foundations, science had to accumulate enough knowledge so that it could organize the accumulated facts into generalized systems and derive laws that would permit the prediction of the progress of chemical reactions in advance of experimental confirmation, We may place the beginning of this era of achievement only half a century ago. It is associated with the names of LeChatelier, van’t Hoff, Kernst, Willard Gibbs, and many other workers in various countries. They showed how the building stones might be fitted together and how calculations could be made of the most efficient ways to design the structure of a chemical process. Half a century ago there were only a few chemists working with meager equipment. Today the number of those to whom chemistry is a professional tool is indicated by the 17,000 members of our own AMERICAN CHEMICALSOCIETY.The research work of the world is reflected in the pages of Chemical Abstracts which last year listed and abstracted over 60,000 scientific papers and patents which had appeared during the year, each one a contribution by an earnest research worker t o the scientific foundations of the chemical industry.
Scientific Methods in Industry The chemical industry now has true scientific foundations. No manufacturer thinks of starting a new process without calculating the best yields which can be obtained a t various temperatures and pressures, and studying the heat balance and the energy requirements of each step. The process outlined from these theoretical studies is tested experimentally in the laboratory and then on a larger scale, and finally is erected into the full manufacturing process. A few years ago I had the privilege of being conducted through one of our great American chemical plants by Herbert Dow who had been the moving spirit of this organization from its beginning. We went through structure after structure and finally came to one which was clearly not quite finished. Dr. Dow apologized for taking me into a building which was still in construction but said, “I want t o show you something which is new.” There were columns and stills, but I could not guess from anything I saw what the plant was producing. We stopped in a room whose four walls mere completely lined with delicate recording and control instruments. I still did not know what plant we were in until Dr. n o w said: “This new bromine plant is operating entirely without human operators. If a little free bromine escapes to the sewer a recorder catches it a t once and the necessary valves are changed automatically.” This plant of the Dow Chemical Company was operating on native brines with relatively high bromine content. The extension of this process of accurate potentiometric control together with greater refinements in operations made possible the great new plant to recover bromine from ocean water. This plant is so efficient that it recovers 90 per cent of all the bromine in the water, although the amount is so small that over 200,000,000 pounds of water must be treated daily t o recover 15,000 pounds of bromine. Let us consider a little more carefully how astonishing a fact this is. Assume that, of the people living in New York one out of every five hundred is cross-eyed. You are asked to design a process which will test the crowds passing up Broadway a t Times Square and pick out the cross-eyed people without interrupting the flow of traffic and with an efficiency of 90 per cent. You would reply that it is impossible. Yet something not dissimilar to that has been accomplished here. The ocean water contains about one part of bromine to five hundred parts of total salts in solution. It flows con-
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tinuously into this plant a t the rate of 10,000,000 pounds an hour, carrying in solution 350,000 pounds of salts and as one of the constituents 700 pounds of bromine in salt form. The process decomposes the bromides, separates the free bromine, and delivers it a t the rate of 15,000 pounds a day to be used as a constituent in a chemical to improve the knock rating of gasoline. It was the automatic control introduced a t the Dou- Chemical Company which, after further study of the properties of ocean water, permitted this plant to be designed so accurately that it went into operation as a successful unit from the beginning. Our petroleum industry has changed in tTventy years from a sleepy, rule-of-thumb industry to one which is employing all the latest scientific resources. A designer of one of the modern huge stills, which may each treat over 20,000 barrel. of crude petroleum a day, says that, if the heat balance of the still and its distillation columns does not come within 2 per cent of their calculations they feel they have not done a good job. This is a remarkable achievement, but still more astonishing is his statement that the reason that they cannot do a better job is that they lack sufficiently accurate data on the purely scientific constants, such as latent heats, and specific heats of the various hydrocarbons as they are mixed in the crude petroleum. The gases from the cracking plants have until recently been uqed only for fuel. Valuable solvents are now made from them, and within the last few months a large plant erected next to a petroleum refinery started smoothly into operation and commenced production of solvents almost without a hitch-another example of a process carefully designed and erected on adequate scientific foundations.
Effect of Unscientific Methods In contrast to these two examples of thorough investigation preceding design of process and plant, let me cite an illustration of an expensive plant to manufacture a new product, which was designed and built less than twenty years ago by a large chemical corporation that did not believe in spending much money on scientific foundations. During the first six months of operation this plant produced less than it mas supposed to produce in three days, and the owners saw that it could be made to work only by a radical redesign a t a cost of several more million dollars. It was a monument to the folly of the corporation which did not believe in research and scientific foundations. Our brains are not superior to those of Aristotle, Sir Francis
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Bacon, or Benjamin Franklin. The only reaSon 13e are making more rapid progress is that we have access to books and journal? where are stored not only the data about countless individual materials and reactions, but also the complete plans of many building units which are helpful in conqtructing the scientific foundations of a new proceqs.
Relation of Chemical Industry to Other Sciences It was only about fifty years ago that science became well enough establiqhed to cause its recognition as a potential leader rather than a humble servant of the chemical industries. The evolution from servant to leader proceeded a t an accelerating pace, and those industries which adopted scientific leadership grew rapidly. The World K a r with its hosts of new problems caused our whole country to attach greater value to scientific leadership. The growth of our chemical industries since the war has been astounding and would have been impossible had not the scientific foundations been developed until they n-ere broad and deep enough to carry the huge superstructure so rapidly erected upon them. The chemical induqtry reqtq not only on the foundation. supplied by chemistry; physics, mathematic.., and the various branches of engineering are indispensable. S o one who has been privileged to inspect the complex equipment in the plants engaged in refining petroleum, making rubber tire
