678 TECHNICAL CHEMISTRY 



tion would also be valuable in technical directions," and these 

 views led to the founding of what is now the German Bunsen So- 

 ciety for Applied Physical Chemistry, whose considerable mem- 

 bership comprises both men of pure science and representatives 

 of technical science. The suggestions of applications from men such 

 as Ostwald, van 't Hoff, Bancroft, and others, accompanied as 

 they are by striking demonstrations, are always most welcome 

 and appreciated. But it is no new custom for the most eminent 

 exponents of pure science for a while to step into the field of appli- 

 cation. We have but to cite the names of Baeyer, Berzelius, Bunsen, 

 Davy, Debus, Dumas, Faraday, Fischer, Frankland, Hoffmann, 

 Liebig, Mabery, Remsen (to whom the medal of the Society of 

 Chemical Industry has just been awarded), Williamson, and Wurtz 

 as examples. Or, taking a single technical subject, such as the 

 explosives industry, we have Lavoisier perfecting the manufac- 

 ture of gunpowder; Gay Lussac serving on the advisory committee 

 of powders and saltpeter; Berthollet inventing chlorate powders; 

 Liebig investigating the fulminates and devising means by which 

 the commercial manufacture and use of mercuric fulminate was 

 made possible; Schoenbein discovering gun-cotton and introduc- 

 ing it for use as a propellent; Bunsen, with Schischkoff, making 

 researches on the composition of powder gases and powder residues; 

 Berth elot, led by a patriotic desire to serve his country in time of 

 peril, exhaustively experimenting with explosives of every de- 

 scription, .collecting and correlating the data of his own experi- 

 ments with that previously recorded and combining this* with the 

 descriptions of the attendant phenomena and the theories he had 

 deduced from analyses of all this material in his Force of Explo- 

 sive Substances, and Mendeleeff and Dewar developing the smokeless 

 powders adopted by the countries of which they respectively are 

 citizens. 



While technical chemistry is under manifold obligations to pure 

 chemistry, the indebtedness does not stand unrequited. I would 

 amplify this branch of my subject but that it has been so admir- 

 ably done by Dr. William McMurtrie in his address on " The Rela- 

 tions of the Industries to the Advancement of Chemical Science," 

 in which it is shown that many discoveries which have materially 

 affected pure chemistry have been made in the factories. It is 

 a well-known fact and quite in the nature of things that the pure 

 chemist is dependent upon the technical chemist for most of the 

 material used in his researches, and the publications contain fre- 

 quent acknowledgments of this fact. 



Technical chemistry in common with pure chemistry is under 



1 Proceedings, American Association for the Advancement of Science, vol. XLIV 

 pp. 65-85, 1896. 



