236 ILLINOIS STATE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 



the commercial bread of today with that of a few years 

 ago to realize the enormous importance of scientific meth- 

 ods applied to this ancient art \i«^ "> home. 



The Fellowship labeled ''Fiber" Tocm^^^-: 7^ i nary and 

 uninteresting; but when one understands its rarSftications 

 and import, it has a different significance. One of the 

 problems of this fellowship is the testing and develop- 

 ment of fiber shipping containers. If one goes through 

 a freight warehouse these days, he is struck with the lack 

 of wooden boxes and the way in which fiber boxes and 

 cartons have taken their place. The development of con- 

 tainers includes not only the study of the fiber boards, 

 multiple and corrugated, but of the adhesive, which must 

 be cheap and at the same time proof against storage in 

 damp warehouses and exposure to weather. 



One of the tools of this fellowship is a miniature Ferris 

 w^heel, operated by a motor and containing a series of 

 baffles, so that a loaded container may, in a few minutes, 

 be subjected to all the drops and bumps of a thousand, 

 two thousand, or three thousand miles. Other tools give 

 the actual strength of the fiber and tape employed. 



The Sulphur Fellowship has a number of most inter- 

 esting problems. 



You will realize how enormously the production of this 

 element was stimulated by the war, as the starting point 

 in the manufacture of sulphuric acid, which in its turn 

 lay at the foundation of the manufacture of explosives. 

 Now, the war over, the companies producing sulphur in 

 the Texas fields have an enormous excess of this element 

 over what the markets can possibly absorb. The question 

 is, how to use the vast sulphur deposits. Perhaps some 

 of these present will have some ideas on the subject, A 

 large scale use which seems possible is as a material for 

 large acid proof containers. 



Curiously enough, Avhile the sulphur obtained from 

 the deposits by the Frasch process is very pure (often 

 99.9% ), the presence of a trace of oil in the sulphur makes 

 its continued combustion in a sulphur burner difficult, be- 

 cause the oil forms a film which extinguishes the flame. 

 A special burner had to be devised for the purpose. 



