New Britain Herald Newspaper, December 2, 1927, Page 31

TeChem IS Hardly a Stience or Industry out Depends on VER the conflict and chaos of our daily interests a new king is aris- ing. He is a king, not of nations, but of sciences and industries, of the professions and trades. He is the chemist—a term that still sounds lowly and submissive, reeking of the fumes of the labora- tory, but one that is beginning to assert its predominating influence in every phase of our life. he chemist has only recently begun to feel his oats. For a long time he has felt his importance in the progress of mankind, in industrial development and scientific advancement. But he was known to us only as one of those lean, keen-nosed individuals wearing an acid-stained smock and delving mysteriously among tes tubes and retorts in the chemical laboratory. Last year, however, he crept out of his veritable cocoon which has confined him throughout the past, and began to show himself to the people. He got his first voice at the Institute of Politics at Williamstown, Mass., and, as representative of the American Chemical Society, opened the eyes of his listeners to his achieve- ments, HE BEGINS TO TELL THE WORLD This year, however, feeling even mightier he has inaugurated his own Institute of Chemistry, under the auspices of the same society, and has revealed his im- mense power to the world. He is no longer the quiet, plodding mixer of chem icals the illusioned world has pictured him. He is the research scientist on whom depends practically every industry, practically every profession and even some of the pure sciences that long before his rise have asserted their own importance in this world. The chemist is king, for to him we go to enhance our progress, our health and our very lives. The chemist 15 called in today to unravel the problems of the steel manufacturer, the automobile maker, and practically every other type of manufacturing industry. He. is called upon to study the mysteries of medicine and guide the physician in his care of the sick. He it is who has discovered the important elements in our foods, so that today our diet is prepared on a more scientific plane and our health and age are ad- vanced. He has taken to the X-ray and the micro- scope, besides the test tube, and has gone as far as the ultimate particle of matter to'learn how it affects us in our daily affairs. Look over the list of famous chemists, from all parts of the world, at the recent Institute of Chemistry at the Pennsylvania State College. It is a review of practically every important industry, profession and pure science that affects our existence. EUROPE SENDS ITS LEADERS . From across the Atlantic there is Dr. E. K. Rideal, lecturer in physical chemistry at Cambridge and an outstanding authority on catalysis, that revolutionary science still a mystery even to the chemist himself, by which a substance can hasten a chemical reaction with- out itself undergoing a change. It is a science that has already saved millions of dollars for industry and that promises to save many billions more. With Prof. Rideal at the Institute was Prof. J. C. st s F WE were to search high and low for the cost- liest thing in the universe, we couldn’t find any- thing as costly as nothing! That sounds more like an attempt to be clever than a pure statement of fact, but it is more fact than it is cleverness. For it is nothing, the actual lack of anything at all, for which this country is paying more than a million dollars a week. What is more astounding, there are great institu- tions in the United States that would be glad to double, even triple, this payment if they could be assured of getting nothing else but nothing for their money. Un- fortunately, science hasn't achieved the ideal of obtain- ing absolutely nothing at no matter what price. To science, nothing has a distinct name. That's “vacuum.” It is contained—as well as nothing can be contained—in the millions of glass bulbs that are in use for electric lighting and for radio transmission and reception. LIGHT DEPENDS ON NOTHING It is this vacuum, this lack of the gases of the air within - these tubes, that makes it possible for these strange units to give us light or to bring us music from afar. It isn’t put into these tubes, of course. You can't put nothing into something. But the vacuum is left, when the air or gas that was formerly in the tubes is pumped out. That's exactly what is done by the ingenious vacuum Drummond of University College at London, an author- ity on_nutrition, on vitamins and deficiency diseases. Jean Piccard of the University of Lausanne was there to reveal his rescarch and remarkable progress in dyes. And Hans Tropsch, associate to the great Franz Fischer of Germany, told of their progress in motor fuels, alcohols and organic solvents. All this may mean little to the lay reader, who isn't used to thinking in terms other than those connected with his immediate interests. But these researches, ex- tending from the simplest atom to the most complex and mysterious of compounds, affect his progress which- ever way he turns. Take the manufacturing industries, for instance, and hear what Dr. John E. Teeple of New York, one of the leading consulting chemists in the country, has to say. s Kesearcl e FTES A N < B T UR— MEDICINE PrrreiremReese SN S AT PROE. HENRY C. SHERMAN, GREAT FOOD CHEMIST, TYPIFIES THE RISING SCIENCE. *“Chemistry industry is absorbing the other manufac- turing industries,” is his pronouncement. “It will eventually take charge of all manufacture excepting such operation as cutting and fitting, weaving and knit- ting, shaping and molding, and assembling and dis- tributing to the millions of people. NOTHING FREE OF CHEMISTRY “Twenty years ago the manufacture of steel was scarcely thought of as a chemical operation, but today the U. S, Steel Corporation is one of the largest manu- facturers of by-product chemicals, and it has just an- nounced the organization of a research department in charge of a chemist to study the chemistry of steel and its alloys. “The manufacture of aluminum is decidedly a chemical industry. The latest advances in copper pro- duction are largely chemical. The whole field of metallurgy is definitely becoming an integral part of the chemical industry. “Tanning, glass, synthetic textiles, petroleum re- fining, rubber may be added to the list. Look over your automobile piece by piece and see whether you can find anything, except possibly wood, from the tires to the top and from the lenses to the tail light, that hasn't undergone chemical transformation. “Try the same experiment with your radio, your airplane, telephone, office floors and kitchen floor coverings.” That's only in the field of manufacture, where ma- terials are being synthesized to take the place of wan- ing supplies of natural products, and where new pro- cesses are being devised to enhance production. OUR FOOD IS CHEMICAL But the same is tru¢ of medicine, of the various engineering professions, and of such distantly related sciences as electricity and even astronomy. For the study of the stars includes the study of the gases and chemicals within them, and the lighting of our homes ds on the progress of research in metals and gas- t are used for lamp manufacture, Food is believed to be within the scape of the phy- sician, or dietician. if any one. But perhaps the great- est food expert in the country, Prof. Henry C. Sher- man of Columbia University, is primarily a chemist. He it is who delves into the mysteries of the vitamins, those new elements in our foods that are believed to be =0 highly effective as body builders and disease deter- rents. His is the field of proteins, carbo-hydrates and such. things with which the lean and the stout are so painfully familiar these days. X-rays have been associated somehow with hospitals and broken bones. But they are the means of ascer- taining the construction of metals and other chemical elements, and have become above all the tool of the chemist. So have the microscope and the spectroscope, for the analysis of the minute and the difficult. The test tube and retort are still important in chemi- cal research, but they have had to make room for other appliances. Altogether, these methods and conveniences have placed the chemist in the role of the king of the sciences and industries, and ruler of our destinies. He still remains hidden in the odorous chemical laboratory, but his achievements are known and felt as are those of no other scientist. B B - } :{ DRS. WHITNEY AND LANGMUIR, MAKERS OF NOTHING SRR 8 pump invented by Dr. Irving Langmuir at the research laboratories of the General Electric Company in Schenectady. The pump draws out all the air or gas it possibly can withdraw, to leave this vacuum. 4 & Yet as efficient as this pump is, it hasn't succeeded in leaving absolutely nothing in each tube, by extracting every particle of gas out of it. Dr. W. R. Whitney, director of the General Electric laboratory, describes the e e e e e e B B e e e e W B e e e b e e e e e e P e e e e e e ot e e e operation of this pump in his report to the Engineering Foundation. But he's mighty finicky over his scientific demands for an absolute vacuum when it is learned that the Langmuir pump has succeeded in removing all but S S S § only one-ten-billionth of the gas that was originally in the tube! THESE SCIENTISTS ARE PARTICULAR From the scientist’s point of view, however, that’s Dr. Whitney explains: have been unable to altain a vacuum wherein a cubic inch includes fewer molecules than there are people in the world. Even so they have succeeded in removing 99.99,999,999 per cent of the gas. *“In other words, only one out of ever 10,000,000, 000 molecules remains. Yet there are 40,000,000.- 000 molecules in every cubic inch. Compare that with the population of the entire earth, estimated at less than 2,000,000,000. *“Across the broad girth of America, 3000 miles a great belt of fine sand nearly a fifth of a mile wide and ten feet deep. Then imagine it suddenly reduced to an almost invisible line just two grains broad and cne grain deep. “That is a graphic illustration of how a modern Coolidge X-ray tube is exhausted of air by the high No vacuum known to still far from a vacuum. “Strive as they may, scientists across, Im efficiency Langmuir pump. science is absolutely complete “The swiftness with which the air is drawn out is equally marvelous. If fron a vessel holding a quart there are removed a million molecules a second, it would take 750,000,000 years to remove practically all of its air, “The Langmuir two seconds! pump acc