The Bell System Technical Journal 



October, 1930 



Chemistry in the Telephone Industry ^ 



By ROBERT R. WILLIAMS 



An account is given of the activities of the Chemical Department of the 

 Bell Telephone Laboratories. In the Laboratories chemists act chiefly as 

 advisers and critics. They concern themselves with such problems as the 

 theory of chemical structure as related to dielectric properties and simultan- 

 eously attack the task of making an improved substitute for gutta-percha 

 which renders possible a transatlantic telephone. They are interested in the 

 colloidal structure of cotton and silk and the influence of moisture and elec- 

 trolytes on their insulating properties. The dispersion hardening and fatigue 

 resistance of lead and its alloys, the fabrication of platinum-alloy vaciuim- 

 tube filaments, and of new magnetic materials such as permalloy and permin- 

 var have required their attention. The corrosion of cable systems is due 

 largely to stray currents but is stron:'ly influenced by chemical factors. 

 Other underground corrosion, and particularly the slower and more insid'ous 

 corrosion and tarnishing of indoor telephone apparatus, have justified a 

 broad program of investigation of the corrosive factors involved in ocean, 

 earth, and atmosphere. Related to these studies are those of protective 

 finishes, whether metallic coatings or organic paints and lacquers. The per- 

 manence of a great variety of materials must often be predicted as best it 

 may without the test of service life. This interest in permanence is reflected 

 in a program of experiments in preservation of telephone poles. 



THE public mind associates the chemist with glass retorts and evil 

 smells, with war gases or the glare of furnaces against the sky. 

 To the technical leader in industry, however, the wide distribution of 

 chemists outside predominantly chemical enterprises has become a 

 familiar fact. A casual reference to the thirty subject classification 

 headings in Chemical Abstracts will serve to illustrate how widely indus- 

 trial chemists have become disseminated and how large a volume of 

 work they are producing. 



When one reflects that all engineering is essentially applied physics, 

 and that it has become subdivided into a score of specialized fields, it 

 seems very natural that chemistry also should have found varied appli- 

 cations as the sum total of chemical knowledge has increased. Perhaps 

 the day is not far distant when the term ' ' physical chemist ' ' will repre- 

 sent to the lay mind as well-defined and distinct a calling as that of 

 civil engineer. 



It is therefore only a part of a general movement in industry that has 



placed the chemist in a position of some importance in the telephone 



business. His relative importance in the communication field is small, 



as the industry must permanently remain essentially electrical rather 



^Iiid. (3° Engg. Cheni., April, 1930. 



603 



