The procurement of the nuts, however, was but the first step in the production of carbon for use in our mask canisters, for after charcoal is first burned its pores are still filled with various impurities which may be summed up by the word "tar." When the charcoal was given a second heating, under careful temperature regulation, this tar was burned out, with the result that the charcoal itself became much more active in its absorption of gas. In fact, properly activated charcoal is more than absorptive—it is catalytic in its action toward the gaseous poisons used in the war, not only absorbing them but hastening their breakdown (digestion) into less injurious substances.
The activating of charcoal offered at the start considerably more of a problem than the question of making the charcoal itself, since activating had never before been conducted on a commercial scale. Two months of experimentation showed us that the best distillation of shells and pits for charcoal was that conducted in illuminating-gas-making retorts. The activation thereafter had to be done in special equipment permitting of fine control of temperature. The Government eventually spent more than $1,000,000 in a charcoal activating plant, providing for America the best protection known to science against the poisons which Germany had introduced into warfare.
The cement granules, which also had to go into the canisters, supplied another problem. We originally used a special soda-lime for this material, but only obtained a satisfactory product after Maj. H. W. Dudley, R.E., came to America as our British advisor and brought to us the British granule formula. The basis of this cement was lime, to absorb gases of an acid nature. Portland cement was used, to give hardness and prevent disintegration and the formation of dust in the canister. Then infusorial earth was added, to make the compound porous in texture. A little sodium hydroxide was put in, to increase the alkalinity of the mixture. Finally there was an infusion of sodium permanganate, which is a powerful oxidizing agent. This latter chemical was added as a precaution against arsine. Arsine and arsenical compounds were difficult to use in warfare, but the Germans had introduced them to some extent, justifying us in adding this protection.
In making the granules the sodium permanganate solution was mixed with the cement. The mixture was roughed out into slabs, allowed to set for three days, dried, ground up, screened to the proper size, and packed in drums for future use.
As has been noted, the charcoal and cement were packed in the canister in alternate layers. The cement had the virtue of working while the carbon slept—that is, the carbon was active when there were gases present to be absorbed, but the cement kept on thereafter, digesting the gases which had been absorbed by the charcoal. The cement was not quick in action, but it had a remarkable capacity for consuming some poisons.
To return to the chronological development of manufacturing facilities, after we had placed the contracts for the first 1,000,000 masks in the early fall of 1917, we began looking around for facilities for producing carbon and cement in the quantities which we should need in the near future. We found at Astoria, the district near Hell Gate at the junction of the East River and Long Island Sound in New York, the large gas works of the Astoria Light, Heat & Power Co. perhaps the largest illuminating-gas plant in the world. This was a subsidiary of the Consolidated Gas Co. of New York, which concern readily agreed to turn over to the Government some of its retorts and to permit the construction of a Government-operated plant on its grounds. We might have been seriously delayed in the production of gas masks except for the extraordinary and continuing efforts of Mr. W. Cullen Morris, Chief Construction engineer of the Consolidated Gas Co., and Mr. Addicks, its vice president. It was due to Mr. Morris that a $150,000 granule plant was constructed, heavy complicated equipment installed, and operations started in the short space of 30 days.
Let us now go back to the history of actual mask production. At the start it was estimated that when the Hero Manufacturing Co. had reached full capacity it could assemble and turn out 6,000 masks a day. The fuel shortage and the railroad congestion of the late fall and early winter of 1917-18 hampered our supplying the Hero Manufacturing Co. with parts, until the mask production, averaging 2,430 a day as it had in November, dwindled to 1,500 a day in December. The Goodyear Co. at Akron had meanwhile established its Akron-Boston motor track line. This was put at the service of the Gas Defense Division, hauling various supplies from both Akron and Boston to the assembling plant at Philadelphia. Sometimes in the mountains of Pennsylvania the trucks would be blocked in snow and the patriotic citizens of the community would get out with shovels and work until the supplies again started on their way.
Slabbing the doughlike mixture of carbon and spreading it on screen-bottomed trays at carbon plant No. 2.
