Chapter I: Front Matter

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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

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

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 53

The kelp harvester gathering the seaweed from the Pacific Ocean 53

A battery of Koppers by-product coke-ovens at the plant of the Bethlehem Steel Company, Sparrows Point, Maryland 60

In these mixing vats at the Buffalo Works, aniline dyes are prepared 61

A paper mill in action 120

Cellulose from wood pulp is now made into a large variety of useful articles of which a few examples are here pictured 121

Plantation rubber 160

Forest rubber 160

In making garden hose the rubber is formed into a tube by the machine on the right and coiled on the table to the left 161

The rival sugars 176

Interior of a sugar mill showing the machinery for crushing cane to extract the juice 177

Vacuum pans of the American Sugar Refinery Company 177

Cotton seed oil as it is squeezed from the seed by the presses 200

Cotton seed oil as it comes from the compressors flowing out of the faucets 201

Splitting coconuts on the island of Tahiti 216

The electric current passing through salt water in these cells decomposes the salt into caustic soda and chlorine gas 217

Germans starting a gas attack on the Russian lines 224

Filling the cannisters of gas masks with charcoal made from fruit pits--Long Island City 225

The chlorpicrin plant at the Bdgewood Arsenal 234

Repairing the broken stern post of the _U.S.S. Northern Pacific_, the biggest marine weld in the world 235

Making aloxite in the electric furnaces by fusing coke and bauxite 240

A block of carborundum crystals 241

Making carborundum in the electric furnace 241

Types of gas mask used by America, the Allies and Germany during the war 256

Pumping melted white phosphorus into hand grenades filled with water--Edgewood Arsenal 257

Filling shell with "mustard gas" 257

Photomicrographs showing the structure of steel made by Professor E.G. Mahin of Purdue University 272

The microscopic structure of metals 273