370
INDUSTRIAL A N D E N G I N E E R I N G CHEMISTRY
value of the various projects from the j>oint of view of national defense and its social and economic advantages. All the schemes proposed are L>ased on the continuation of small imports of calcium carbide from abroad, especially from Norway, but the aim is t o build up successively also special plant for tiie manufacture of derivatives, sue!* as acetylene, acetone, acetic acid, etc. E x p e r i m e n t s Are Macte w i t h Sortie New Insecticide's The Kothampstead Experimental Station has paid much attention t o investigations into the effectiveraess of various insecticides and weed killers, a problem which has also been extensively studied by the Imperial Institute. Ira the annual report just issued mention is made of work on tlie insecticidal properties of synthetic organic compounds and of various plant products, including nucotine, cytisine, eserine, and others belonging to> the alkaloid class. The group offish*poisons now provides the basis of a considerable and expanding industry. In contract to the arsenicals, these insecticides do not contaminate fruit. Safety has also been found to be a welcome property o f pyrethrurn, now extensively cultivated i n East Africa and other parts of the Empire. Denis is invaluable a s a means for preventing the attack of the warble fly. In view of the recent, government announcement that the price o f lime and basic slag to British fasmers is to be reduced, the Rothampstead Institute's experiments in this field axe of special interest. The response to liming was most marked in liberally manured grassland, particularly if ammonium sulfate was also used. Even in t h e winter these limed areas stand out clearly, whereas much less differentiation is seen on poorly manured plots and on those receiving nitrate of lime. With ammonium sulfate and minerals liming has completely changed the balance of t h e botanical composition within the group of grasses, though it has not reintroduced weeds and leguminous plants. Progress I s M a d e in H*>wTemperature Carbonization Further progress in low-temperature carbonization has been made during the past year. There are now four Coalite plants for the production of smokeless fuel i n operation (Barngh, Askern, Greenwich, and Bolsovcr) antd a fifth is to be erected in South Wales. The cost of this scheme, providing For the distillation of 500 tons of coal a day, will be approximately £650,000, of which one-half will be given in exchange for debentures b y the government and the Nuffield Trust for the assistance of new industries in the depressed areas. In addition an oil and gasoline distillation a o d refining plant for the treatment of trie liquid by-products is to be erected. FurtHer, a large
VOL. 13, NO. lo
coal oil and gasoline plant is under con" C u r e " for Plant Disease struction in Derbyshire a t a cost of nearly £200,000. The total output of the old Editor, News Edition: and new works will be about 775,000 HE proposal to make flies their own tons of coal per annum, yielding approxiexecutioners through the medium of mated 542,500 tons of smokeless solid nitrogen triiodide [ N E W S EDITION, 15, fuel and just over 16,000,000 gallons of 236 (May 20, 1937) 1 is not likely, seeing liquid products, such as gasoline, Diesel that it was published in a chemical jouroil, tar acids, and creosote oil. nal, seriously to increase the casualty list July 2, 1937 of the human or insect races. You may be interested to know, however, that a very different outcome was narrowly G e r m a n P r o d u c t i o n o f Collodion. averted here a short while ago. The compiler of a popular enc3rcloCotton a n d Celluloid at pedia of gardening phoned me to say that Record Levels one of his contributors suggested the aplication of two mixed solutions as the ERMAN production of collodion cotest cure for some disease particularly ton, a material used extensively affecting the delphinium plant. Some throughout the world in the manufacture glimmering of an earlier chemical course of celluloid, artificial leather, lacquer, aroused misgivings in the mind of the oilcloth, picture films, and for numerassistant who was passing the article for ous other purposes, has gained rapidly press, and it was decided to ask expert in recent years, according to reports made advice. I was able to tell them that, alpublic by the Commerce. Department's though the procedure was not the orthoChemical Division. Production increases have been due in dox method of preparing mercury fulminate, the amateur experimenting under part to better export demand but mainly very general instructions, or more probto expanded domestic consumption. ably his heirs, executors, and assigns, Many German industries are u^ing colmight find t h e treatment proposed a lodion cotton and its many products as radical cure for more ailments than substitutes for natural materials which black spot. As I am given to underformerly were imported. stand that this publication has an adExport gains recorded last year were vance subscription of at least 100,000 due almost entirely to heavy shipments copies, and that most of its readers would to Soviet Russia, which heretofore has be uninformed on chemical matters, the been a negligible market for such prodresults of this "popularizing of science" ucts. might have been serious. CGermany's output of celluloid, which ERIC N. DAVIS is one of the principal products manuEditor, The Chemical Trade Journal and factured from collodion cotton, has also Chemical Engineer expanded rapidly in recent years, par265 STRAND, ticularly since the government became LONDON, W. C. 2, ENGLAND active in forcing the use of domestic June 11, 1937 synthetic materials as substitutes for natural products imported from foreign countries. N E W building code tending to curb riveting noise was passed July 20 bv t h e Board of Aldermen of New York, N. Y. Effective January 1, 1938, the GEORGE R. D E A N , who recently received code permits welded steel in place of the Ph.D. degree from Pennsylvania riveted or bolted construction. Mayor State College, has accepted a position as LaGuardia is expected to approve the research chemist with the Miner Laborameasure. tories, 9 South Clinton St., Chicago, 111.
T
C
G
A
The Age of Invention
I
^HE Age of Invention," a mural painting by David Hutchinson, of Yonkers, N. Y., is one of three on the walls of the Children's Room in the Yonkers Public Library. The mural is of special local interest on account of the number of Yonkers men shown in it. From left to right, the inventors included are: Robert Fulton, with a model of the Clermont; the Wright brothers, with a model airplane; Elisha G. Otis, with the great elevator plant built upon his inventive genius in the background; Henry Ford in an early automobile; Samuel F. B. Morse
with an early telegraph; Alexander Graham Bell with a telephone; Thomas A. Edison with the first incandescent electric light; Michael Pupin; Leo H. Baekeland, performing a chemical experiment; Rudolph Eickmeyer, inventor of the trolley motor, with his protege\ Charles P. Steinmetz; Halcyon Skinner (background) with his Axminster loom; George Eastman with photographic apparatus; and Charles Lindbergh and Alexis Carrel with their "mechanical heart." The other murals are "The Age of Chivalry" and "The Age of Discovery."
Courtesy, Yonkers Public THE
A G E OP INVENTION
Library
