[...]... furnaces by fusing coke and bauxite 217 224 225 234 235 240 A block of carborundum crystals Making carborundum in the electric furnace Types of gas mask used by America, the Allies and Germany during the war Pumping melted white phosphorus into hand grenades filled with water —Edgewood Arsenal Filling shell with "mustard gas" Photomicrographs showing the structure of steel made by Professor E.G Mahin... competing nation do us untold harm by the mere device, for instance, of delaying supplies, or by sending inferior materials to this country or by underselling our chemical manufacturers and, after the destruction of our chemical independence, handicapping our industries as they were in the first year or two of the great war! This is not a mere possibility created by the imagination, for our economic... chemicals, dyes and drugs by foreign interests bent on preserving their monopoly If one recalls that through control, for instance, of dyes by a competing nation, control is in fact also established over products, valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars, in which dyes enter as an essential factor, one may realize indeed the tremendous industrial and commercial power which is controlled by the single lever—chemical... 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 Frontispiece one of the greatest triumphs of modern chemistry FACING PAGE The hand grenades contain potential chemical energy... Burning air in a BirkelandEyde furnace at the DuPont plant A battery of BirkelandEyde furnaces for the fixation of nitrogen at the DuPont plant Fixing nitrogen by calcium carbide A barrow full of potash salts extracted from six tons of green kelp by the government chemists Nature's silent method of 17 32 33 33 40 41 nitrogen fixation In order to secure a new supply of potash salts the United States Government... rubber 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 61 120 121 160 160 161 The rival sugars Interior of a sugar mill showing the machinery for crushing cane to extract the juice Vacuum pans of the American Sugar Refinery Company Cotton seed oil as it is squeezed from the seed by the presses Cotton seed oil as it comes from the compressors... activity as well as some of the big problems which must continue to engage the attention of our chemists Dr Slosson has indeed the unique quality of combining an exact and intimate knowledge of chemistry with the exquisite clarity and pointedness of expression of a born writer We have here an exposition by a master mind, an exposition shorn of the terrifying and obscuring technicalities of the lecture ... both in the field of military operations and in the matter of economic supplies: unquestionably, without the tremendous expansion of her plants for the production of nitrates and ammonia from the air by the processes of Haber, Ostwald and others of her great chemists, the war would have ended in 1915, or early in 1916, from exhaustion of Germany's supplies of nitrate explosives, if not indeed from... supplies as a consequence of the lack of nitrate and ammonia fertilizer for her fields Inventions of substitutes for cotton, copper, rubber, wool and many other basic needs have been reported These feats of chemistry, performed under the stress of dire necessity, have, no doubt, excited the wonder and interest of our public It is far more important at this time, however, when both for war and for peace needs,... visible phenomena of the material world on the basis of the conception of invisible minute material atoms and molecules, each a world in itself, whose properties may be nevertheless accurately deduced by a rigorous logic controlling the highest type of scientific imagination But a layman is interested in the wonders of great bridges and of monumental buildings without feeling the need of inquiring into . or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net Title: Creative Chemistry Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical. 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. 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