710 TECHNICAL CHEMISTRY 



to Acheson." * This remarkable abrasive, prepared by heating a mixture of silica, 

 coke, aluminia, and sodium chloride in an electric furnace, was invented in 1890 

 by Edward Goodrich Acheson (1856- ) while experimenting for the artificial pro- 

 duction of diamonds, and is one of the many beautiful products obtained at 

 Niagara Falls, where quite a number of chemical manufacturers have established 

 their plants in order to take advantage of the power obtained from the great 

 waterfall. Mr. Acheson has also succeeded in preparing artificial graphite as a by- 

 product in the manufacture of the carborundum, and he claims that it is the 

 result of the decomposition of the carbide formed in that process. 2 



Although the existence of calcium carbide has been recognized ever since its 

 original production in 1857 by Edmund Davy, Wohler, and Berthelot, it was not 

 until May, 1892, that its commercial production became known in consequence 

 of its chance discovery by Thomas Leopold Willson (1860- ) while experiment- 

 ing in Spray, North Carolina. He obtained it by the fusion and reduction in an 

 electric furnace of a mixture of finely powdered and intimately mixed lime and 

 coke. When it comes in contact with water, decomposition ensues, with the pro- 

 duction of acetylene gas, an illuminant of remarkable power. This valuable com- 

 pound is also manufactured at Niagara Falls. 



Another valuable application of the high temperatures obtained by the electric 

 furnace to substances from which the extraction of the metal was formerly con- 

 sidered impossible is the method patented in November, 1903, by Frank Jerome 

 Tone (1868- ), of Niagara Falls, New York, for obtaining metallic silicon by 

 reducing silica with carbon in an electric furnace of his own construction. 



Of great value is the elaborate bulletin 3 on Chemicals and Allied Products 

 prepared for the Twelfth Census by Charles Edward Munroe, already mentioned, 

 and Thomas Marean Chatard (1848- ). The industries discussed are grouped 

 into nineteen classes and with each the discussion is introduced by a history of the 

 development of the manufacture in the United States, and at the close is a brief 

 bibliography. The volume includes a digest of United States patents relating to 

 the chemical industries. 



Worthy of the most distinguished consideration is the career of Charles Fred- 

 erick Chandler (1836-). This eminent chemist has since 1864 taught the technical 

 chemistry in the Schools of Science in Columbia University and no record of the 

 development of chemistry applied to the arts in the United States would be com- 

 plete without mention of his work. It is true that no great invention bears his 

 name, but he has achieved results greater than inventions, for he has educated 

 chemists, and yet even more than that as we shall see. Go where you will and you 

 will find busy workers in science who have learned from Chandler something of 

 that splendid power of applying chemical methods to the subject at hand which 

 has long since gained for him the reputation of being the foremost authority on 

 technical chemistry in the United States. Wherever gold or silver is determined, 

 the little assay ton weights their conception was a stroke of genius claim 

 him as their inventor. The brilliant series of articles on technical chemistry the 



1 The Electric. Furnace (Easton, 1904), p. 273. 



2 Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry, vol. xix, p. 609, 1900. 



3 Census Bulletin, no. 210, 4to, 306 pp. Washington, June 25, 1902. 

 Much credit is due to H. M. Pierce for the process originally invented by him 



in 1876 and since greatly improved for the recovery of by-products from the 

 smoke of charcoal kilns. See Munroe, Census Bulletin, no. 210, and The Econom- 

 ical Production of Charcoal for Blast-Furnace Purposes, by O. N. Landreth, Pro- 

 ceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, vol. xxvn, 

 pp. 145-151, 1888. 



According to Munroe (Census Bulletin, no. 210, p. 26) the Pennsylvania 

 Salt Manufacturing Company of Natrona, Pennsylvania, " were the first to manu- 

 facture porous alum." 



