184 PROCEEDINGS OF THE INDIANA ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 



and^defiuing his duties. These duties were at that time confined to the 

 examination of commercial fertilizers offered for sale in the State with a view 

 of determining whether or not they met the standards claimed. The first 

 official control of foods and fertilizers, therefore, in the State of Indiana must 

 be awarded to Purdue University, I held this position of State Chemist 

 until my retirement from Purdue University in 1883. The duties of State 

 Chemist devolved upon my successor. Subsequently the statute was 

 changed so that the duties of the State Chemist were discharged by the 

 Director of the Agricultural Experiment Station. This list of men who have 

 become eminent in the chemical profession in the Institution of Indiana and 

 its industries is not very large. This is due perhaps entirely to the fact that 

 my absence from the State has put me out of touch with what the chemists 

 have been doing and, therefore, the omissions of many names of eminent 

 chemists is due to my ignorance. To some extent, however, this is not the 

 case. With the exception of the State University and Purdue University, 

 the educational institutions of Indiana are not able as a rule to employ more 

 than one and sometimes not one cheniist devoted wholly to that profession. 

 The result is that as the professors have to dicharge a multitude of duties in 

 connection with their scientific work they do not become eminent in any one 

 branch thereof. This is no reflection whatever, however, upon the splendid 

 work which these men have been doing for science in an environment which 

 many per.sons would think very unsuited to fruitful results. It is not always 

 the well equipped laboratory and abundant supplies of reagents that produce 

 eminent chemists. Like poets, they are born, not made. This is brilliantly 

 illustrated in the history, in my opinion of the Avorld's greatest scientist, 

 Michael Farraday. The value of the work which these men have done 

 without gaining world wide rejjutation for eminence in any particular l)ranch 

 rests as an eternal inoiuinicnt to their devotion to duty and to their skill as 

 teachers. 



1 cannot close this hurried sketch without calling attention to two or 

 three of the earlier scientific workers of Indiana that I have not yet mentioned 

 and men whom 1 have had the honor and pleasure of knowing. Among these 

 I mention first Professor Tingley, who was for many years connected with 

 Ashbury, now Depauw University. Professor Tingley was one of those splen- 

 did workers who not only had skill but imagination and perhaps had he been 

 al)le to de\ote himself to one single branch of science would have acquired 

 wide eminence. I, as a young man, knew Professor Tingley quite well 

 though I never had had the opportunity of hearing him lecture l)Ut once. 

 When the question of producing light from electricity was first broached, 

 and this I think was along about 1868 or 9, Professor Tingley, at my invita- 

 tion came to the High School of Indianapolis to give an illustrated lecture on 

 electricity. He brought with him a large battery made of alternate pieces 

 of gas coke taken from the inside of gas retorts and roughly shaped and zinc 

 plates. This battery he had constructed himself. He put up a number of 



