DEVELOPMENT OF TECHNOLOGICAL CHEMISTRY 

 DURING THE LAST FORTY YEARS.'^ 



By O. N. Witt, 

 Professor of Technical Chemistry at the Polytechnic School of Charlottenburg. 



The representatives of chemistry, general and physical, inorganic 

 and organic, have striven in noble emulation to surpass each other in 

 the number and importance of their discoveries. From the labora- 

 tories great and small, official and private, the results of research 

 have flowed like the rivulets which, irrigating the well-watered fields, 

 come together in brooks, then in streams and in rivers, bringing 

 fertility to the habitations of men in the valleys. An abundant 

 harvest has been raised on these watered plains, a harvest which has 

 been enthusiastically consumed by the people. 



This harvest, the reward of scientific research, the abundant fruit 

 of the patient work of the mind, consists of the applications which 

 contribute to the well-being of the people. This is why technical 

 chemistry is the worthy companion of abstract research in our science. 

 It should prosper when research is flourishing, and the additions to 

 chemical technique, during the last forty years, are a striking proof 

 of the correctness of this assertion. 



About the time when the German Chemical Society was founded 

 a period of far-reaching transformation began in industrial chem- 

 istry. The industry of mineral acids and alkalis, based on the Le- 

 blanc process — the only one which could boast at that time of the 

 title " great chemical industry " — still adhered to its stereotyped 

 operations and to the dependency of its series of steps, one upon the 

 other. But the young Titan which was destined to struggle with and 

 cause its complete rehabilitation — the Solvaj^ process for the produc- 

 tion of soda by means of ammonia — had come into existence and 

 was already developing. About 1870 this process appeared to have 



"Address before the German Chemical Society at the celebration of the for- 

 tieth anniversary of the society, November 11, 1907. Translated by permission 

 from Berichten der Deutscheu Chemischen Gesellschaft, Jahrgang XXXX. 

 Heft 17. Berlin, 1907, pp. 4644-^652. 



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