[Assistant Professor of Analytical and Organic Chemistry, Armour Institute of Technology.]
Chemistry has always been a utilitarian science, a science whose direct applications to our every-day interests has been on every side recognized. Even in the days of alchemy, that fantastic forerunner of our present science, her devotees were concerned with the changing of the base metals into the noble ones, of lead into silver, and of copper into gold, and also with the search for the philosopher’s stone, that mysterious something which would give perpetual youth.
From these workers arose in the course of the years, the facts and the theories which were incorporated into the science of chemistry. But it is not entirely to the alchemists that chemistry owes its development. By far the greater number of facts, if not of theories, came down to us through the traditional knowledge of the chemical industries. Numerous animal and vegetable products, such as sugar, starch, the oils, gums and resins, had been familiar commodities as long back as history records. And the ancients were informed in such typically chemical industries as that of dyeing with vegetable dyes, pigment manufacture, varnish making, soap making, paper making and the fermentation industries. In fact the science of chemistry as we have it today owes much more to these unknown workers in the industries who transmitted their chemical facts from father to son, than it does to the creations of the imaginations of those picturesque, if not so truthful, alchemists.
It is entirely impossible to divorce the science of chemistry from its industrial applications. The science owes much to the industries. The industries owe even more to the science. And if that relationship has been very close in the past, it is much closer now than it ever was; and it is getting closer all the while. The utilitarianism of our age makes it absolutely necessary that the two shall be so united that the utmost of good shall result from the union.
The application of science in general, and of chemistry in particular, to the industries has this one general result. It takes that industry out of the “rule of thumb” class, and places it firmly on a sound basis. It is no longer conducted in a haphazard manner, but according to intelligent design, based on the most accurate scientific information. Of course the fierceness of business competition has ordered this change, more than any other factor. The pure science of chemistry would have developed without industrial applications, because there are investigators who are seeking the truth regardless of any of its immediate applications. But in the industries, it is a matter of dollars and cents. The most efficient is the winner. And the most efficient is the one who utilizes in his business all the scientific information that can be brought to bear on the subject, and who is always looking for new facts that can be applied.
Chemistry, then, is applied to the industries in two distinct ways, the first in discovery, in finding a new substance which can be used, or a new process by which some useful or necessary substance can be made; the second in improvement, in making a certain product better, or cheaper, in utilizing wastes, or in starting from cheaper raw materials.
There are but two kinds of industries: (a) Those which are based on processes which change the form of matter, such as the manufacture of furniture for example, and (b) those which are based on processes which change the composition of matter, such as the manufacture of Portland
cement from clay and limestone. Now group “b” comprises by far the greatest number of industries, and since the science of chemistry concerns itself with just those changes in the composition of matter, it is evident that most of our industries are chemical in their nature. We have but recently come to realize this. A list of such industries and operations which are essentially chemical would be found to include almost every industry that we can think of. I need only make mention of the subject of fuels, gas and coke, of cement, mortars, brick and other building materials; of petroleum and its products; of asphalt; of the products of the destructive distillation of wood; of cellulose and of paper; of pigments, resins, varnishes; of rubber; of soap, fats and the fatty oils; of gums; of sugar and of starch; of the textile industries and of the dyes; of leather and glue; of explosives; of the heavy chemical industries, the manufacture of acids, alkalies and salts; of the manufacture of glass and the ceramic industries; of the fermentation industries; of the manufacture and standardization of medicines; of the subject of soils and artificial fertilization; of the subject of foods, and of nutrition; of the subject of water, sewage and sanitation; of photography; of all the electro-chemical industries and processes; of the production of steel, of copper, of lead and of all the other metals. I need only mention this formidable array of subjects and industries to convince the most sceptical one that chemistry does in fact, concern us, directly or indirectly, in all of our activities.
As I have said previously, chemistry influences industry in two distinct ways: First, in the discovery of new substances and new processes; secondly, in the perfection of known substances and known processes. In either of these fields the chemist is proud of his record. The conquests are so numerous that he is at a loss as to how or where to begin if he would tell of them. The whole field of industrial chemistry is one succession of chemical achievements,
mammoth industries that had their humble birth in the chemist’s test tube, his beaker, or his retort; the wealth of by-products saved to the world from what was a few years ago sheer waste; and above all increased efficiency in the manufacture of all products. The chemist does not claim more than his due when he points out that his activity covers the whole field of our daily experiences, and that his activity has always been for the lessening of waste, for greater efficiency, in a word, for the development of civilization. To illustrate the points which have already been brought out, the story of the soda industry, the beginning of the modern chemical industries, can be used. The beginning is far back in another century, so intimately is the development of the soda industry bound up with the advance of civilization.