INDUSTRIAL CHEMISTRY—BAEKELAND. 295 
In the same way, England had become the leader in another 
important branch of chemical industry—the manufacture of coal gas. 
The Germans were soon to make up for lost time. Those s*me 
German universities which, when Liebig was a young man, were 
so poorly equipped for the study of chemistry, were now enthusiasti- 
cally at work on research along the newer developments of the physical 
sciences, and before long the former pupils of France, in their turn, 
became teachers of the world. 
Liebig had inaugurated for the chemical students working under him 
his system of research laboratories; however modest these laboratories 
may have been at that time, they carried bodily the study of chemistry 
from pedagogic boresomeness into a captivating cross-examination 
of nature. 
And it seemed as if nature had been waiting impatiently to impart 
some of her secrets to the children of men, who for so many generations 
had tried to settle truth and knowledge by words and oratory and 
by brilliant displays of metaphysical controversies. 
Indeed, at that time a few kitchen tables, some clumsy glassware, 
a charcoal furnace or two, some pots and pans, and a modest balance 
were all that was needed to make nature give her answers. 
These modest paraphernalia, eloquent by their very simplicity, 
brought forth rapidly succeeding discoveries. One of them was truly 
sensational: Liebig and Wohler succeeded in accomplishing the direct 
synthesis of urea; thinking men began to realize the far-reaching 
import of this revolutionary discovery whereby a purely organic 
substance had been created in the laboratory by starting exclusively 
from inorganic materials. This result upset all respected doctrines 
that organic substances are of a special enigmatic constitution, 
altogether different from inorganic or mineral compounds, and that 
they only could be built up by the agency of the so-called “vital 
force’’—whatever that might mean. 
Research in organic chemistry became more and more fascinating; 
all available organic substances were being investigated one after 
another by restless experimentalists. 
Coal tar, heretofore a troublesome by-product of gas manufacture, 
notwithstanding its uninviting, ill-smelling, black, sticky appearance, 
did net escape the general inquisitive tendency; some of its constitu- 
ents, like benzol or others, were isolated and studied. 
Under the brilliant leadership of Kékulé, a successful attempt was 
made to correlate the rapidly increasing new experimental observa- 
tions in organic chemistry into a new theory which would try to 
explain all the numerous facts; a theory which became the signpost 
to the roads of further achievements. 
The discovery of quickly succeeding processes for making from 
coal-tar derivatives numerous artificial dyes, rivaling, if not sur- 
73176°—sM 1914——15 
