300 Kansas Academy of Science. 



I want briefly here to call your attention to a few of the great 

 many ways in which catalyzers are cheapening and simplifying 

 processes in technical chemistry. These processes were called to 

 ray attention on a trip through New York and Chicago, and are 

 not intended to be a complete list of the uses of catalyzers in 

 chemical industries. 



Hydrochloric acid is changed to chlorine and water by being 

 passed over hot bricks impregnated with copper chloride. Hydro- 

 gen sulphide from soda-tank waste of a soda factory gives up its 

 sulphur by presence of acid and iron oxide, or passing hydrogen 

 sulphide into an area of hot chlorides of sodium and copper they 

 obtained sulphate of sodium and chlorine gas. Roasted sulphur 

 gas mixed with air scrubbed over a platinized washboard yielded 

 in one year 800,000 tons of sulphuric acid. Naphthalene is gen- 

 erated from coal-tar acid oxidized by sulphuric acid in the presence 

 of mercury and copper yielded indigo. 



A solution of the peroxide of hydrogen and ether on the nega- 

 tive photographic plate gives an invisible positive; this followed 

 with manganous sulphate gave a beautiful brown and alkaline so- 

 lution giving a carbon print on the sensitized paper used. Am- 

 monia from illuminating gas passed with air over platinum yielded 

 nitric acid. Lead and manganese are used as driers for linseed oil. 

 A series of zinc tubes through which vapors from alcohol were 

 passed yielded eighty per cent aldehyde. At the packing plants 

 the manipulation of fats with oleic acid in the presence of nickel 

 yielded stearic acid -/an enzyme from the castor bean was used to 

 saponify the fats, yielding a soap that was lye free. So catalysis is 

 playing an important part in the synthesis used by manufacturers 

 and cheapens numerous products more or less necessary to our 

 present method of living. 



Catalysis has also been very useful to the biological chemists. 

 Recently the nitrogen of the air has been combined with lime to 

 form cyanamide of lime, in which form it may be used as a fer- 

 tilizer. 



Doctor Lohnis of Leipzig has been able to change "sarcosin"^ 

 by means of cyanamide of lime and nitrogen to kreatin, an animal 

 protein. So that we can have our meat manufactured by the aid 

 of catalysis in the chemical laboratory. 



Doctor Koch of Germany, about this time, developed the op- 

 sonian theory to explain certain phenomena observed in the blood. 

 The white blood corpuscles absorb certain foreign substances as 

 bacteria when found in the blood, and under certain conditions 



