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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXVll. No. 699 



from 1837 until 1847; nor was he, like 

 many inventors, without funds to carry on 

 his work. He spent a considerable for- 

 tune in carrying on his researches, but 

 failed. It was not until 1888 that the 

 Chance-Claus process, simple and cheap, 

 based upon Gossage's reactions, was suc- 

 cessfully introduced. There are other 

 examples identical with this one. The 

 reactions in the Solvay process, the Har- 

 greaves-Robinson process, the Deacon 

 process, the contact sulphuric-acid process, 

 were all known before the men were found 

 who could successfully introduce them into 

 manufacture. 



I have now dealt at some length with 

 the usefulness of chemistry in the manu- 

 facturing industries, but there are other 

 applications of chemistry which I must 

 mention or I shall not have presented my 

 subject to you in the fullest extent. The 

 science of chemistry has permeated every 

 field and phase of modern life. Its growth 

 has been so steady and so silent, and it has 

 been developed on the whole by so few 

 men and in the retirement of laboratories 

 and studies, that the public mind has 

 hardly yet awakened to its full signifi- 

 cance. As to its possibilities, no men, not 

 even its enthusiastic disciples and devotees, 

 dare to predict. They only watch its 

 growth and foster it as they would a child. 

 I wonder how long it will take us to catch 

 up with our own times. We live, it seems, 

 half in the past and half in the future. 

 "We look back to our boyhood days with 

 delight, and think, to mention only one 

 example, of the good things we used to 

 have to eat, and we look ahead to some 

 future time when those conditions shall 

 have been restored. How often do we 

 seriously stop to consider that engineering 

 and chemical science have made and are 

 making possible better ways of living than 

 were ever possible before? I wonder how 

 long it will take us to realize that better 



butter can be and is being made in cream- 

 eries than on the farm, that better hams 

 and bacon can be and an being made in 

 modern packing-houses than in the country 

 butcher shop, that better bread can be and 

 is being made in bakeries tLan in the 

 home— not to mention the superiority of 

 that distinctly modern invention— the 

 breakfast cereal? Why should it not be 

 true that the larger, establishments are 

 able to turn out better and more uniform 

 goods than the smaller ones? In the large 

 institutions formulas can be worked out 

 scientifically by the experts employed 

 there, whereas in the small institutions 

 where the services of the expert are not 

 afforded, that relic of a dark and bar- 

 barous age — the so-called rule-of-thumb — 

 still holds sway. In all these develop- 

 ments, modern chemistry has taken a pre- 

 eminent part. There is no home in this 

 broad land of ours, no home in the whole 

 civilized world, but is better ventilated, 

 better heated, better lighted and supplied 

 with better food and clothing, owing to 

 the applications of the science of chem- 

 istry. A broad statement, you will say. 

 Possibly. Take the question of lighting. 

 Glass is a very old invention, but window 

 glass is a modem one — for example; in 

 Roman times, from the beginning of our 

 era to the downfall of the empire, glass 

 was extensively used for tableware (more 

 extensively than it is to-day, in the better 

 Roman families), it was used for orna- 

 ments, for mural mosaic work, for pave- 

 ments in courts, but not for windows. 

 Window glass is a modern invention. And 

 I ask you, how would you like to substi- 

 tute for the broad clear panes in your 

 dwellings the translucent sea shells, the 

 mica, the oiled paper and the other devices 

 which have been used at various times and 

 by various peoples to let in the light of 

 the sun and shut out the cold of winter? 

 But window glass has to do with natural 



