I- 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHEMICAL INDUSTRY 



IN THE LAST HUNDRED YEARS 



F. W. Frerichs 



It was indeed a pleasure to me when I received from 

 the Academy of Science an invitation to take part in a 

 cycle of lectures which had been arranged for the 

 purpose of discussing before its members the achieve- 

 ments of scientific research and the development of the 

 condition of life, which we are witnessing in our period 

 of time. It is only natural that chemistry should have a 

 place in this discussion since this branch of knowledge 

 has come forward in modern times to enter more than 

 any other science into our daily life. 



Chemistry was in its infancy at the beginning of the 

 19th century. It is true that at an early time men began 

 to inquire the why and how of things about them, and to 

 take them apart. It is true that from such analysis, 

 particularly of inorganic things like rocks and ores, men 

 began to learn the characteristics of the simple elements 

 which go to make up our world and how they behave 

 when brought together in compounds not occurring in 

 nature. But the scope of chemical work done at that 

 time was so small and the amount of chemicals pro- 

 duced was so insignificant that it hardly deserved men- 

 tion among manufacturing industries. 



Berzelius (1779 to 1848) did his experimenting in his 

 kitchen, his cook his only assistant, and yet in this most 

 primitive laboratory he discovered a number of elements 

 and determined their atomic weights. He lived, as 

 Woehler put it, in those happy days, when every rock 

 he picked up contained a new element. 



E. Mitscherlich (1794-1863), Heinrich Rose (1795-1864), 

 Leopold Gmelin (1788-1853) and Robert v. Bunsen 

 (1811-1899), worked steadily on the establishment of 

 facts about the interaction of elements and tried to co- 



