1907.] on Problems of A'ppliecl Chemistry. 565 



Leblanc process, all calculated to cheapen it and lessen the nuisance 

 connected with it. I cannot go into details on this point, but I 

 wish to mention at least two things. One of these I have already 

 spoken of in another connection — I mean the recovery of the sulphur 

 from the alkali waste, where it had been the cause of an intolerable 

 nuisance, and which now became the source of considerable profit. 

 The second point is the substitution of machinery for manual 

 labour in all stages of the process. It is only by means of these, 

 along with a number of other improvements, that it has been made 

 possible for the Leblanc process to survive to a certain extent. 

 How much longer that is likely to continue I will not pause to 

 speculate on. The prolongation of its life is due to the fact that in 

 the first stage of the process an important acid is produced, which 

 is not furnished by the ammonia process, viz. hydrochloric acid. 

 Most of this is immediately converted into chlorine, which gas is 

 used up for preparing very important articles of trade, viz. bleaching 

 powder, bleach liquors, and chlorates. Of these, bleaching powder is 

 a British invention, made by the Glasgow chemist, Tennant ; but, 

 apart from this, the manufacture of chlorine and of all chlorine 

 products has been put on its practical basis almost entirely by 

 English inventors, and has been developed more extensively in this 

 country than anywhere else in the world. The processes worked 

 out by Tennant and Dunlop at Glasgow, as well as by a host of others 

 — amongst whom the names of Weldon and Deacon, in Lancashire, 

 stand out prominently — have been copied for generations all the 

 world over. The manufacture of chlorine products, which is not 

 possible in tlie ammonia-soda process, has naturally given a new 

 lease of life to the Leblanc process, at least in its first stage, which 

 is the manufacture of salt-cake and hydrochloric acid. But, on the 

 other hand, this last entrenchment of the Leblanc process is being 

 vigorously assaulted from another quarter — by the electrolytic pro- 

 cesses, which split up the alkaline chlorides directly, and in the 

 simplest possible manner, into free chlorine and caustic alkali. 



AVe are, in these days, so much accustomed to deal with electricity 

 in its innumerable applications, that we are apt to forget how recent 

 is the introduction of that force of Nature into practical chemistry. 

 One of the finest heads among Enghsh alkali makers, whose grasp 

 of the principles of science far surpassed that of most ordinary 

 technical chemists. Dr. Ferdinand Hurter, pronounced himself, as late 

 as is.'^s, decidedly against the commercial possibility of introducing 

 electricity as an agent for manufacturing the cheaper class of chemicals. 

 But within a very few years of that date the contrary had become 

 an established and well-known fact, even in his own domain of 

 alkali. True, in hardly any field have there been more failures to 

 translate the results of science into economical manufacturing pro- 

 cesses than in that of electricity ; and even now it is only quite ex- 

 ceptionally that, wherever the electrical current has to be produced 



