Creative Chemistry

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Creative Chemistry

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Slosson
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Title: Creative Chemistry Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the
Chemical Industries
Author: Edwin E. Slosson

Release Date: November 24, 2005 [eBook #17149]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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Transcriber's notes:
Underscores before and after words denote italics.
Underscore and {} denote subscripts.
Footnotes moved to end of book.
The book starts using the word "CHAPTER" only after its chapter
number XI. I have left it the same in this text.

The Century Books of Useful Science
CREATIVE CHEMISTRY
Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries
by
EDWIN E. SLOSSON, M.S., PH.D.
Literary Editor of The Independent, Associate in Columbia School of
Journalism
Author of "Great American Universities," "Major Prophets of Today,"
"Six Major Prophets," "On Acylhalogenamine Derivatives and the
Beckmann Rearrangement," "Composition of Wyoming Petroleum,"
etc.
With Many Illustrations

[Illustration (Decorative)]

New York The Century Co. Copyright, 1919, by The Century Co.
Copyright, 1917, 1918, 1919, by The Independent Corporation
Published, October, 1919

[Illustration: From "America's Munitions"

THE PRODUCTION OF NEW AND STRONGER FORMS OF
STEEL IS ONE OF THE GREATEST TRIUMPHS OF MODERN
CHEMISTRY
The photograph shows the manufacture of a 12-inch gun at the plant of
the Midvale Steel Company during the late war. The gun tube, 41 feet
long, has just been drawn from the furnace where it was tempered at
white heat and is now ready for quenching.]

TO MY FIRST TEACHER
PROFESSOR E.H.S. BAILEY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
AND MY LAST TEACHER
PROFESSOR JULIUS STIEGLITZ OF THE UNIVERSITY OF
CHICAGO
THIS VOLUME IS GRATEFULLY DEDICATED

CONTENTS

I THREE PERIODS OF PROGRESS 3
II NITROGEN 14
III FEEDING THE SOIL 37
IV COAL-TAR COLORS 60
V SYNTHETIC PERFUMES AND FLAVORS 93
VI CELLULOSE 110
VII SYNTHETIC PLASTICS 128
VIII THE RACE FOR RUBBER 145
IX THE RIVAL SUGARS 164
X WHAT COMES FROM CORN 181
XI SOLIDIFIED SUNSHINE 196
XII FIGHTING WITH FUMES 218
XIII PRODUCTS OF THE ELECTRIC FURNACE 236
XIV METALS, OLD AND NEW 263
READING REFERENCES 297
INDEX 309

A CARD OF THANKS
This book originated in a series of articles prepared for The
Independent in 1917-18 for the purpose of interesting the general
reader in the recent achievements of industrial chemistry and providing
supplementary reading for students of chemistry in colleges and high

schools. I am indebted to Hamilton Holt, editor of The Independent,
and to Karl V.S. Howland, its publisher, for stimulus and opportunity
to undertake the writing of these pages and for the privilege of
reprinting them in this form.
In gathering the material for this volume I have received the kindly aid
of so many companies and individuals that it is impossible to thank
them all but I must at least mention as those to whom I am especially
grateful for information, advice and criticism: Thomas H. Norton of the
Department of Commerce; Dr. Bernhard C. Hesse; H.S. Bailey of the
Department of Agriculture; Professor Julius Stieglitz of the University
of Chicago; L.E. Edgar of the Du Pont de Nemours Company; Milton
Whitney of the U.S. Bureau of Soils; Dr. H.N. McCoy; K.F. Kellerman
of the Bureau of Plant Industry.
E.E.S.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
The production of new and stronger forms of steel is one of the greatest
triumphs of modern chemistry Frontispiece FACING PAGE
The hand grenades contain potential chemical energy capable of
causing a vast amount of destruction when released 16
Women in a munition plant engaged in the manufacture of
tri-nitro-toluol 17
A chemical reaction on a large scale 32
Burning air in a Birkeland-Eyde furnace at the DuPont plant 33
A battery of Birkeland-Eyde furnaces for the fixation of nitrogen at the
DuPont plant 33
Fixing nitrogen by calcium carbide 40

A barrow full of potash salts extracted from six tons of green kelp by
the government chemists 41
Nature's silent method of nitrogen fixation 41
In order to secure a new supply of potash salts the United States
Government set up an experimental plant at Sutherland, California, for
utilization of kelp 52
Overhead suction at the San Diego wharf pumping kelp from the barge
to the digestion tanks