The Romance of Modern Chemistry
Forfatter: James C. Phillip
År: 1912
Forlag: Seeley, Service & Co. Limited
Sted: London
Sider: 347
UDK: 540 Phi
A Description in non-technical Language of the diverse and wonderful ways in which chemical forces are at work and of their manifold application in modern life.
With 29 illustrations & 15 diagrams.
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VALUABLE SUBSTANCES
cene oil.” When each of these is further subjected to
fractional distillation, the important compounds already
mentioned are obtained in a state of comparative purity.
All this clever sifting out of the constituents of coal
tar was very interesting from the purely scientific point
of view, and though that alone would never have made
coal tar the highly important commercial product that
it is to-day, still we must admit that the present realised
value of coal tar goes back ultimately to those purely
scientific researches carried on about the middle of last
century. It is well to realise how much of our modern
comfort and luxury is traceable to such researches, for
there is sometimes a disposition on the part of the com-
mercial world to scoff* at anything which cannot be shown
to have an immediate use. This is a narrow view of
the acquisition of knowledge. The history of the last
half-century teaches us most emphatically that the
advance of a chemical industry is secured not by the
employment of practical men only, but by the co-
operation of these with the skilled chemist. The appar-
ently unpractical researches of the latter are, with the
aid of the engineer, converted into practical manufactur-
ing processes. We in Great Britain have been slow to
appreciate the value of the trained chemist and the
research laboratory; the result is that we have suffered
in certain industries where these factors are essential to
success.
Yet it was an Englishman who made the discovery
on which the whole coal-tar industry is founded. In
1856, the late Sir William Perkin, while still a lad of
eighteen, discovered that when aniline was oxidised by
dichromate of potash, a beautiful purple colouring matter,
which we now speak of as mauve, was produced. A
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