60 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



researcli work necessary in order to establish our position as a dye-making 

 country has been mainly along known lines, involving the extension of 

 reactions which had already been established rather than the discovery 

 of new ones. Nevertheless it is no inconsiderable achievement for our 

 research chemists to have established a position such as that indicated 

 above in so short a space of time, for many of the preparations, the details 

 of which could only be found in the patent literature, had to be worked 

 out de novo and the correct conditions found for their adaptation to the 

 technical scale. It is probably along the lines of decreased cost of produc- 

 tion that research work in the immediate future will be mostly engaged, 

 and especially is this the case with the intermediate products from which 

 the dyestuffs are derived. Moreover, the intermediate products are of 

 the greatest importance for other industries, for example, the Fine Chemical 

 Industry, the Perfumery, and the Explosives Industries, and any improve- 

 ment in the processes for their manufacture or the production of new 

 compounds having enhanced value from the commercial point of view is 

 of the greatest importance to all these industries alike. The parent 

 substances of the intermediate products are the hydrocarbons of coal-tar 

 or the coke-oven by-products. The operations required to convert these 

 hydrocarbons into the finished intermediates often involve many stages, 

 any one of which depends for its cost on the purity and yield of the product, 

 when large quantities are involved a difference of 1 per cent, in the yield 

 may lead to a considerable difierence in the cost of production, and it 

 is obvious that reactions which yield their products in a state of purity 

 sufficient for the market or further stage production' without subsequent 

 treatment make for reduced cost in production. There is thus a wide field 

 for research into the improvement of technical methods which may well 

 occupy the attention of our dyestufis chemists for some time to come. 

 On the other hand, the question of fundamental research into new 

 processes, both for the preparation of new intermediates and new dyestufis, 

 must not be lost sight of. The intermediate determines the character of 

 the dyestufi, and it is always possible that a new intermediate may be 

 discovered which will yield a dyestufi with just that difference of shade 

 as to catch the public fancy, and which will lead to the replacement 

 of the older dyestufi on the market. The sulphonic acids of the 

 naphthol, naphthylamines and amino-naphthols are cases in point. 

 These substances are used extensively for the preparation of azo 

 dyes. There are a great number of these compounds theoretically 

 possible, but only a few have found technical application, owing mainly 

 to the high cost of producing the others. The high cost is nearly 

 always caused by poverty of yield, an objection which may be at any 

 time removed by the discovery of an improved process. The same 

 argument holds good for the dyestuffs themselves. It is futile to 

 say that the vast field of organic chemistry has been thoroughly explored 

 f r the production of new types. At any moment one or other of the 

 men or women engaged in fundamental research may repeat Bohn's 

 discovery of 1901, and obtain a new compound which will be the fore- 

 runner of a new series of dyestufis. It is perhaps too much to ask an 

 industry which is struggling to hold its own to expend large sums on the 

 prosecution of abstract research, most of which will be of no use to it. 



