AMATEUR PHOTOGRAPHER Cluth, Gilt-lettered Cove.s for Briding the Half-yearly

THE CHEMICAL NEWS.

VOLUME CXV.

EDITED BY SIR WILLIAM CROOKES, O.M., D.Sc., F.R.S., &c.

No. 2980.-JANUARY 5, 1917.

SYNTHETIC CHEMISTRY AND THE RENASCENCE OF BRITISH CHEMICAL

INDUSTRY.*

By Prof. GILBERT T. MORGAN, F.R.S.

In attempting at very short notice to deliver this Inaugural Address it becomes my pleasant duty to congratulate the Chemical Society of the Royal College of Science on reaching its twenty-first anniversary. This year the Society attains its majority, for it was founded by our Emeritus Professor, Sir William Tilden, in the autumn term of 1895. It was my privilege to be a foundation member and to serve on the first committee. Moreover, I had the honour of reading the first paper before the Society; this communication being entitled "Artificial Colouring Matters."

£200,000,000 sterling could not be carried on as usual wing to stoppage in the supply of German dyes. Considerable enterprise and capital, both private and govern. mental, were diverted towards establishing means for coping with the dye famine. The situation at present is much easier, but considerable leeway has still to be made before our dye producers can hope to face G.rman competition on equal terms. Considering the many adverse circumstances remarkable progress has been made. Dyes are now being manufactured of which, at the outbreak of war, nothing was known beyond the designedly incomplete details of patent specifications filed by the German discoverers and makers.

ducts.

It is worthy of note that Great Britain was not alone in this quandary as regards dyes and their intermediate proOther dye-using nations, such as France, Italy, Russia, the United States, and Japan, had all been depen. dent on German supplies, and have had to adopt equally strenuous means to produce dyes for themselves.

Another circumstance has arisen out of the war which

The intervening twenty-one years have brought many changes, both to individuals and to the college. In 1907 the chemical department left the old buildings in Exhibition Road and took up its abode in the palatial edifice makes it certain that all progressive industrial nations will opposite the Imperial Institute. Affiliation of the Royal make every effort to develop a home production of College of Science with the Imperial College of Science colouring matters. The urgency of this matter lies in the and Technology led to further developments in the direction fact that a well organised coal-tar products industry is an of applied chemistry. These developments would doubt- essential part of any modern scheme for national defence. less have proceeded along evolutionary lines when the The second chemical war crisis arose over the shortage of war came to alter radically in all directions our ideas con-high explosives. This shortage, which existed among the cerning the relative importance of the value of various Allies only and not in the two Central European Powers, scientific pursuits. "It's an ill wind that blows no one was due to lack of enterprise in the working up of any good," and the war has so far done British chemical coal-tar products. What had long been known to expert workers one good turn in demonstrating their supreme chemists was ignored by the allied nations and their Governnational importance to an apathetic public. This re ments, namely, that the coal tar products are not only the cognition, although not so complete or so generous as it basis of synthetic dyes but also of high explosives. might be, is nevertheless very manifest. Accordingly, a nation destitute of the coal tar industry cannot nowadays be self contained and independent in matters of national defence. Such a nation can only furnish men; their ammunition must be obtained elsewhere from allies or neutrals. In the first year of the war, while the Allies were all more or less in this predicament, Germany was able swiftly to divert the extensive plants of her huge colour factories to the manufacture of high explosives.

From the chemical departments of this and other colleges of science bundreds of the most public spirited and most enterprising students have gone into the ranks of the special brigade of the Royal Engineers, into explosive works, and into other factories dealing with munitions of war. Many have made the supreme sacrifice for their country's cause, and their survivors are all working willingly and cheerfully under very trying circumstances.

The interdependence of these two branches of chemical manufacture, high explosives and synthetic dyes, is, prospects of industrial chemistry as a career for scientifi therefore, of cardinal importance in considering the cally trained men and women.

coal-tar chemistry has again become the Tom Tiddler's It is fashionable at present to think that the domain of ground which it was during the epo h ushered in by the discoveries of Perkin (1856) and Verguin (1859), who prepared respectively mauve or aniline purple and magenta

• Synthetic Chemistry and Renascence of British Chemical Industry.

or aniline red. It is true that behind the barrage of the naval blockade tremendously inflated prices are being obtained for quite ordinary dyes, so that any chemist with a small capital devoted to the manufacture of one or two coal-tar specialities can reasonably expect to gain a very high return for his outlay. Moreover, the needs of the larger firms engaged in dye production or in the manufacture of high explosives are so great that their principals are willing to take into their employment almost anyone who can wave a test-tube in a Bunsen burner, the rates of remuneration being considerably higher than those offered before the war to well-trained chemical graduates.

These halcyon days for the coal-tar chemist will not continue very long after the cessation of hostilities. Since it has been proved to the hilt that a well organised coaltar industry is essential for purposes of national defence, one may assume with considerable confidence that the leading nations of the world will each cultivate to the utmost the manufacture of coal-tar products, including dyes. Consequently the dye users will be largely supplied by dye-makers of the same nationality. Only dyes of superlative quality or exceptional properties will find foreign markets across the various tariff walls. Com petition for the neutral markets of non-producers will be as severe as ever it was before the war. Success will come to those dye-makers and to those producers of other fine chemicals who will use the most scientific methods of investigation and development. These advantages can be secured only by the employment of large staffs of well. trained chemists.

Hopes are being entertained in this country that the trade in fine chemicals will be fostered and protected by a boycott of German products. This idea is as fallacious psychologically as it is economically. For a long time after the war Germans will be very unpopular among peoples of the Allied nations, who will be averse to social intercourse with them. But this sentiment will not suffice to hinder trading relationships. If enemy manufacturers have something desirable for sale they will get it sold. The only way to boycott German goods is to improve on them in either quality, price, or both. The following hypothetical cases may serve to crystallise opinion. German chemists and chemico-thereapeutists excel in the production of useful synthetic drugs, and already before the war Wassermann had announced that certain preparations of selenium and tellurium appeared to have a restrictive action on malignant tumours. It is, at least, quite conceivable that German workers may be the first to hit upon a cure for cancer. Are we going to see our dearest relatives and our best friends die of this scourge when they might be saved by a German remedy? Similarly, it may be found in the future that the retention of our great textile industries might depend on the use of some German dyeing process. In such a case it would be national suicide not to utilise the invention, even though of enemy origin.

College Training of Industrial Chemists.

I believe that in the future the prizes of the chemical profession will be greater, but the competition keener than has hitherto been the case. How then should the chemical student prepare for the strenuous struggle? His training should be centred on obtaining a wide practical knowledge of analytic and synthetic chemistry. It is unnecessary that the student should specialise while at college in the branch to which he will afterwards devote himself in the works or research laboratory, but it is essential that his training should have given him that particularly chemical outlook which is sometimes called the chemical instinct." Throughout his college career the chemical student should strive at increasing perfection in the art of preparing, purifying, and analysing chemical compounds and their component elements. He should become acquainted with the physical properties of these chemical substances and the employment of these proper

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CHEMICAL NEWS,
Jan. 5. 1917

ties in the identification, separation, and purification of chemical entities. So far as time permits he should learn something of the industrial application of these materials. But all this work should be carried out from the standpoint of molecular constitution, and the student should accustom himself to visualise in space the arrangements assumed to obtain in the molecules of the substances under examination.

Three or four years of this training should endow the chemical student with a liberal measure of the laboratory arts. He should be ready to make the most difficult preparation with the utmost economy of time and material and should be able to identify his products with precision by analysis or other methods of physical or chemical diagnosis.

Since the object of this college training is to produce a chemist capable of initiating the manufacture of chemical products on a commercial scale, it has been suggested that the student's work should include courses on engineering and machine design. This addition would certainly render more harmonious the future relations of the industrial chemist with his works' colleague, the engineer. But even assuming that the student spent eight years over his college training, taking the first four years in chemistry and the second four in engineering, or vice versâ, it is very improbable that he would become endowed with the dual set of qualifications which would justify his designation as a chemical engineer. By a chemist I mean a scientific worker who can undertake original research in chemistry. Similarly, an engineer is one who is qualified to apply his originality to problems of engineering. It is very rarely that one finds an individual so gifted as to be able to undertake, with any reasonable chance of success, original investigations in both these fields of scientific activity. The so-called chemical engineer is very frequently a chemist among engineers and an engineer among chemists: Jack of both trades; master of neither.

The difference between chemist and engineer is far deeper than any differentiation induced by training; it is temperamental.

The chemist and engineer represent two entirely different types of mind, the analytical and the constructional. To the individual possessed of the former mental attributes a year spent in chemical research would be far more beneficial than one spent in engineering. The research year would develop still further his chemical instinct; the same period devoted to machine design or to mechanical problems would not convert him into an engineer.

In Germany the research qualification has always been regarded as essential to the attainment of a chemical degree. Here in this country a lot of nonsense has been talked and written about the undesirability of synthetic researches leading to the addition of new compounds to an already swollen total of known chemical substances.

This objection, which is stated with uncompromising frankness in the following passage taken from an English work on organic chemistry published a few years ago, represents what I term Malthusian chemistry, a school of chemical thought which supposes that progress in chemistry is best attained by restricting the output of new chemical compounds.

"Since the time of Kekulé organic chemistry has been for the most part a synthetic science. At the present day considerably over a hundred thousand organic compounds are known, and one need not have the least hesitation in saying that if 70 per cent of them had never been synthesised we should not feel the lack of them to any appreciable extent. The reason for this enormous flood of synthetic material is to be found in the German University system; for since, under the German regulations the degree in chemistry is granted only on the results of original research, it follows that every Ph.D. represents so many new compounds-at least, as a general rule. But these do not include all the forces leading to the steady pursuit of the synthetic branch. The great German dye industry employs in itself an army of chemists, and from

CHEMICAL NEWS Grain-grow.h in Deformed and Annealed Low Carbon Steels.

Jan. 5, 1917

them also flows a steady stream of new compounds. The Bame may be said of the explosive manufacturers and the firms which produce synthetic drugs."

The creed of Malthusian chemistry has obtained so much support among British chemists that it is worth while to analyse the quoted passage with the object of disclosing its fallacies.

It may first be asked why have German Universities as a general rule-decided to give the Ph.D. degree in chemistry to candidates working through an "Arbeit " which represents crudely so many new compounds? The answer is that as a result of long experience the German chemical authorities have decided that this system is the best way of teaching a young chemist his job. The particular group of substances selected is immaterial. At one University it will be polypeptides, at another unsaturated fatty acids, at a third organic arsenicals, at a fourth the colouring matters of flowers, and so on. The utility of the system is that the candidate for the doctorate is receiving a thorough training in the laboratory arts. He learns a great deal about chemical synthetic processes, oxidation, reduction, halogenation, hydrolysis, and many other diverse types of condensation and general reactions. He has to make use of different processes for separating and purifying synthetic products, checking the result of his work by appropriate analytic methods. Over 90 per cent of the successful candidates are destined to take up posts, either in the large coar-tar colour works or in other factories dealing with fine chemicals. Their academic training carried out in the manner just mentioned fits them for their life work in a chemical factory where the output of new substances continues at an accelerated speed. The answer to the enquiry why should this be so is very simple. In the long run it pays chemical factories to prepare and examine hundreds of new substances. Occasionally a new product arises with useful properties, and then the sale of this substance pays with a good margin of profit for all the expensive researches lavished

on the other substances.

The following table, compiled by Dr. Wahl, the eminent French expert on colour chemistry, shows that it pays to

employ large staffs of chemists, who are employed chiefly in making new compounds :

Company

24 24 25

3555 26 26 27 27 27 30

7889 18 18 24 24

55 1800 12 15 18 18

29

20

The discovery that phenyldimethyl-iso-pyrazolone (antipyrine) had useful physiological properties was an accident. The firm of Meister, Lucius, and Brüning, who exploited this invention, must have spent large sums in researches on the pyrazolone series. Out of these they obtained another useful compound-the drug, pyramidon dimethylamino-antipyrine-and the profits on the sales of these two medicaments more than recompensed them for their outlay.

GRAIN GROWTH IN DEFORMED
AND ANNEALED LOW CARBON STEEL.*
By RALPH H. SHERRY, M.A.

3

CONSIDERABLE attention has been given in recent years to the phenomenon of coarse crystallisation or grain-growth in pure iron and. low-carbon steels permanently deformed and annealed. While grain-growth may occur in certain other metals and homogeneous alloys, under similar conditions, iron is worthy of special attention because of certain physical properties influencing grain-growth which it possesses, and more particularly because of its extensive use commercially.

Not a little difficulty has faced workers in such materials as sheet, wire, cold-drawn bar stock, and pressings of low carbon steel. From time to time mysterious epidemics of brittleness in the material would be encountered, breakage occurring under ridiculously small stresses, accompanied by coarsely grained fractures. Annealing often seemed to aggravate the difficulty. Material which passed safely through the various fabricating processes was often put into service under a shroud of fear that it would "crystallise in service."

Fortunately, most of the factors determining these irritating conditions have gradually become known, and it is the purpose of this paper to state the results of a rather extended investigation covering the subject, and to explain the conditions under which grain-growth occurs. Methods will be suggested by which this trouble may be prevented or cured in general, and for each material investigated in particular, and general conclusions with regard to the phenomenon noted in the investigation will be given.

Historical.

The occurrence of coarse crystallisation in low-carbon steel at low temperatures was first mentioned by Stead (Journal of the Iron and Steel Institute, 1898, ., 145), who observed it "in certain steels and pure irons, originally of fine grain, produced by fcrging or certain heat treatment," when annealed between 500° C. (930° F.) where where the growth was more rapid. Annealing at 700° C. slow growth occurred. and at 600-750°C. (1110—1380° F.), (1290° F.) for a few hours produced exceedingly coarse grains. Grain-growth was also observed in sheets containing o'05-012 per cent carbon. One peculiarity noted was that grain-growth was never observed in sheets of a gauge less than 18 (Stead, Idem. 1898, ii., 137). Experiments to produce the structure at will were not invariably successful.

Charpy (Comptes Rendus, cli.) showed that a coarse granular structure could be produced in steel low in carbon and phosphorus by pressing the material in a screw plate, and subsequently annealing at 700° C. (1290° F.). He obtained grains about ten times the original size; by proper selection of the annealing temperature and time extremely large grains could be produced.

Sauveur produced the same condition in low carbon steel, deforming the metal by tension, compression, bending, and in the Brinell hardness testing machine, subsequently annealing his specimens below the thermal critical range ("Note on the Crystalline Growth of Ferrite below its Thermal Critical Range," Proc. Sixth International Congress for Testing Materials, 1912, vol. xi.). The existence of three zones of crystallisation corresponding to the amount of strain was observed. Sauveur came to the conclusion that a definite or "critical" strain It may be said that much of this synthetic work is inaccurate and superficial. That criticism may be levelled was necessary in order to produce grain-growth on against pioneers in all branches of human endeavour. annealing. In other investigations the strain necessary Explorers, who risk health and fortune and frequently give to produce grain-growth has been found to cover a rather The narrow limits noted by Sauveur are their lives, in disclosing the secrets of hidden continents, are not always topographically impeccable, but their enter- probably due to his use of annealing temperatures altoprise paves the way for more cautious and accurate carto-gether below the thermal critical range. Chappell (Fourn. Iron and Strel Inst., 1914, i., 460) graphers. The work of pioneers is essential and its crudities are atoned by daring and originality. investigated the phenomenon in somewhat the same way (To be continued).

wide range.

* A Paper read before the Faraday Society, December 18, 1916.