THE ROMANCE OF CARBON? 
By ARTHUR D. LITTLE 
Arthur D. Little, Inc., Cambridge, Massachusetts 
As the chemist studies the material structure of the universe he 
finds it to be composed of about 90 substances of such persistent 
identity and character that he has come to regard them as elements. 
He has reason to believe that not more than 92 of these elementary 
substances exist and he suspects that these may, themselves, have 
been formed in the cosmic process by successive condensations of 
hydrogen and helium, the lightest and simplest of them all. He 
finds that the atoms of which these elements are composed are not 
the hard, round, indivisible little particles which he had long as- 
sumed them to be, but that they are instead complex systems of 
electrical charges, vibrant with intensest energy and relatively very 
far apart. 
There is, therefore, for each of the elements an astronomy of its 
own, as awe inspiring in its order and minuteness and as far re- 
moved from the plane of our existence as that of the stars them- 
selves. Each of the elements, also, has its own story of absorbing 
interest. There is helium, first discovered by the spectroscope in 
the atmosphere of the sun and now extracted from natural gas to 
carry airships above the clouds; radium, which in the beginning 
made its presence known by the image of a key upon a photographic 
plate and thereafter revolutionized our ideas of matter and sup- 
plied a new and powerful aid to therapy; gold, which since the 
dawn of history has furnished the motive for fierce endeavor, in- 
trigue, exploration, crime, and wars. But these, and many others, 
are stories for another time. Our present theme is the romance of 
the element carbon, a fragment from a single chapter in the great 
romance of chemistry. 
ATMOSPHERIC DUST 
In considering carbon one is immediately struck by the protean 
aspects of its occurrences. To that ubiquitous individual, the man 
in the automobile, carbon presents itself as a nuisance in his engine 
1 Presented before the 7ist meeting of the American Chemical Society, Tulsa, Okla., 
Apr. 5 to 9, 1926. Reprinted by permission from Industrial and Engineering Chemistry, 
vol. 18, No. 5, p. 444. May, 1926. . 
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