890 



NATURE 



[December 22, 1923 



world, there is scarcely one deliberately concerned 

 with providing any fighting service with more effective 

 means of destruction, and not one scientific worker in a 

 hundred sets himself intentionally to make such a dis- 

 covery or invention. It is just as impracticable, how- 

 ever, to prevent the wrong use of scientific powers by 

 individuals as it is to prevent literary people from the 

 misuse of their genius for purposes of gain. The facts 

 of science are as free a« the words of our language, and 

 in both cases they may be used for the uplifting of 

 mankind or for its degradation. 



The truth is, as Mr. Baldwin remarked in his speech 

 at the Guildhall on November lo, the present troubles 

 in the world are largely owing to the fact that while 

 men have learned to control forces of Nature they have 

 not learned to acquire control of themselves. He urged 

 that more pains should be taken to apply the methods 

 of science to human problems, and by that he obviously 

 meant not the development of poison gases and high 

 explosives, but the principle of facing facts honestly 

 and fearlessly, and basing just conclusions upon them. 

 The methods of science should be the methods applied to 

 social problems if sound principles of progress are to be 

 determined. The Labour Party's recent manifesto says 

 nothing of what science has done or may do to improve 

 the world in this way, but asks, " Can the method of 

 science be applied to nothing save the organisation of 

 men for war and their equipment with instruments of 

 destruction ? " We have here a paraphrase of Ruskin's 

 assertion that " The advance of science cannot be 

 otherwise recorded than by the invention of instru- 

 ments to kill. and put down noble life " — a view in 

 which distorted vision is combined with the sin of 

 ingratitude. 



Modem civilisation is built upon science, and almost 

 all industrial developments had their origin in prin- 

 ciples or substances discussed in scientific laboratories 

 by investigators working purely for the advancement 

 of natural knowledge. The principle that a moving 

 magnet can create a current of electricity in a coil of 

 wire near it, discovered by Faraday nearly a century 

 ago, led to the construction of the dynamo, and was 

 the seed from which the great industry of electrical 

 engineering has grown. It is estimated that this in- 

 dustry now represents a capital of more than one 

 thousand million pounds, and it could not have existed 

 without the discovery by Faraday of the fundamental 

 principle of all electro-magnetic machinery. All the 

 pure copper required for this machinery and electrical 

 purposes generally is produced by electrolysis, and 

 here again the principles used were discovered during 

 scientific investigations by Davy and Faraday. Alu- 

 minium — that most useful metal, which is destined to 

 compete with iron and steel in its importance — is now 

 NO. 2825, VOL. 112] 



manufactured exclusively by electrolysu of a fused 

 mineral containing it. 



The electric furnace was first used by the French 

 chemist, Moissan, in scientific research ; and now it is 

 employed for the production of hundreds of thousands 

 of tons of steel annuaOy. Calcium carbide, used so 

 extensively in the production of acetylene gas for 

 house lighting and motor lamps, and for oxy-acetylene 

 welding, is entirely manufactured by heating lime and 

 coke together in an electric furnace. The discovery 

 of X-rays was an incidental result of researches 

 into the nature of electricity, and the existence of 

 electric waves, which led to wireless telegraphy and 

 telephony, was first proved in a laboratory. Long 

 before the thermionic valve had made the wonderful 

 achievement of broadcasting possible, the effect upon 

 which it is based was the subject of scientific investiga- 

 tion, and studies of the emission of electrons disclosed 

 the principle upon which it depends. 



Nearly a century and a half ago it was sh 

 Priestley and Cavendish that, when electric sparks arc 

 passed through air, some of the nitrogen and oxygen 

 combine to form oxides from which nitric acid or 

 nitrates may be afterwards obtained. Thb is the prin- 

 ciple of the process by which hundreds of thousands of 

 tons of nitrates are now produced annually in Norway 

 for use as agricultural fertilisers in the place of salt- 

 petre from Chile. The process needs, however, a 

 supply of cheap electric power to make it commercially 

 profitable. 



When Germany was cut off from natural supplies of 

 nitrates during the War, she had to obtain what she 

 wanted from the nitrogen in the air, and was so successful 

 that more than a million tons were produced in 1918. 

 The method used was based upon the principle of cata- 

 lysis, whereby chemical combination is promoted by 

 the presence of small quantities of particular elements, 

 which thus act as matrimonial agents. Nitrogen and 

 hydrogen were passed under pressure over finely 

 divided iron, and a certain amount of the two gases 

 combines under these conditions to form ammonia, 

 which, by being passed with oxygen through tubes 

 containing another catalytic agent, may be converted 

 into nitric acid. The hydrogen required for com- 

 bination with atmospheric nitrogen is obtained by 

 electrolj'sis of water, or from water-gas and steam by 

 a process depending upon catalysis. The nitrogen is 

 obtained by distilling liquid air. Nitrogen is more 

 volatile than oxygen, so it distils off first and the two 

 gases may thus be separated. 



The methods used in the manufacture of liquid air 

 and other gases, and in modem refrigerating machines 

 generally, are based up)on scientific experiments by 

 Joule and Kelvin on the phenomena attending the free 



