42 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Pig. 6. Odde : Cakbid and Cyanamid Works. A beautiful secluded nook at the 

 head of Sor-fjord has been transformed into an industrial center, with an ever-present 

 pall of smoke. 



pig iron and steel, calcium carbid and cyanamid, nitrates and nitrites. 

 Two lines of this development I have recently had the opportunity of 

 studying rather carefully, and these will be described somewhat in de- 

 tail.i 



The first is the manufacture of calcium cyanamid. The history of 

 this substance, which bids fair to become an important article of com- 

 merce, may be worth briefly recounting. In 1836 Sir Humphry Davy 

 in pre'paring metallic potassium, obtained a substance containing cal- 

 cium and carbon, which gave off a badly smelling gas when placed in 

 water. A quarter of a century later Woehler obtained the same sub- 

 stance by fusing a calcium-zinc alloy with coal, and he recognized the 

 gas which was evolved when this was put in water, as acetylene. In 

 1890 Winckler found that by reducing calcium carbonate by magnesium 

 the same substance could be formed, and four years later Moissan pre- 

 pared the substance, now recognized as calcium carbid, in quantity, by 

 reducing limestone with coke in the electric furnace, thus founding the 

 great carbid and acetylene industry of the present. Since the great 

 development of the extraction of gold from poor ores by potassium 

 cyanid, every effort has been made to prepare cyanid more economically, 

 and in 1904 it was found that barium cyanid, the analog of calcium 



' For much of the data regarding these plants I must express my indebted- 

 ness to the courtesy of Mr. G. "W. Sinclair, of the Northwestern Cyanamide 

 Company of Odda, and of Mr. A. Scott-Hansen, of the Norsk Hydro-Elektrisk 

 Kvaelstofaktieselskab of Kristiania. For any comments I am alone responsible. 



