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] |