“So far as I know, Harrison, Dyer, Grey, and Hemming were the first to patent the ammonia process in Great Britain in 1838. Great expectations were excited by it, but it soon sank into oblivion.
“Thirty or forty years ago the manufacture of soda was by no means at the head of the great branches of industry; at that time, too, ammonia was not to be had cheaply and in immense quantities, and that branch of machine building which has furnished the necessary apparatus for chemical industries did not exist. Besides this, Anton, of Prague, in 1840, claimed to have proved that in the ammonia process a very considerable portion of the common salt still remained undecomposed.
“After a sleep of sixteen years the ammonia process again entered the field. On the 26th of May, 1854, Turck took out a patent in France, and on the 21st June, the same year, Schlœsing, chemist of the Imperial Tobacco Factory at Paris, took out a patent for France and Great Britain. The mechanical portion and machinery for Schlœsing’s process were designed by Engineer E. Rolland, director of the tobacco factory. In 1855 a company was organised to work this process. An experimental manufactory was started at Puteaux, near Paris, but, owing to its situation and arrangements, as well as the salt monopoly, it could not produce soda cheap enough to compete with the other process, and hence, in 1858, the experiment was abandoned. Schlœsing and Rolland were of the opinion that sooner or later the new process must come into use in making soda.
“It must here be noticed that in 1858 Professor Heeren, of Hanover, subjected the ammonia process to a very careful test in his laboratory.
“From his experiments and calculations it was ascertained that this process was better adapted to the manufacture of the bicarbonate than of the simple protocarbonate of soda.
“To render this sketch more complete and historically true, it must be mentioned that T. Bell, of England, took out a patent, Oct. 13th, 1857, for a new soda process, which in principle and practice was almost literally the same as that of Dyer.
“It was known when the jury was working at Paris in 1867 that essential improvements had been introduced into the ammonia process by the efforts of Marguerite and De Sourdeval, of Paris, and James Young, of Glasgow. A more important fact, however, is that Solvay and Co., of Conillet, in Belgium, actually exhibited at the Paris Exhibition carbonate of soda prepared by this new process.
“Since that time the ammonia process has been developed and perfected to such an extent, especially by Solvay, Honigmann, and Prof. Gerstenhœfer, that as early as February, 1873, A. W. Hofmann, in his introduction to the third group of the catalogue of the Exhibition of the German Empire, was able to make this remark:—‘At all events the ammonia process is the only one which threatens to become an important competitor of the now also most exclusively employed process of Leblanc.’ The Vienna Exposition has since proved the truth of this assertion.
“There are now large works in England, Hungary, Switzerland, Westphalia, Thueringia, and Baden, which employ the improved ammonia process, and some of them make fifteen tons of soda per day.
“The advantages of the new process over that of Leblanc are very evident, although the details of the process have not yet been made public.