November 7, 1913] 



SCIENCE 



647 



Since no industrial research laboratory can 

 be called successful which does not in due 

 time pay its way, it is pleasant to record 

 that the eastern laboratory is estimated to 

 yield a profit to its company of $1,000,000 

 a year. In addition to the generous salaries 

 paid for the high-class service demanded by 

 the company, conspicuous success in re- 

 search is awarded by bonus payments of 

 stock. 



In Acheson and Hall have been already 

 named two recipients of the Perkin medal, 

 the badge of knighthood in American indus- 

 trial research. The distinguished and 

 thoroughly representative juries which 

 award the medal annually had previously 

 bestowed it upon Herreshoff for his work 

 in electrolytic copper refining, the contact 

 process for sulphuric acid and the invention 

 of his well-known roasting furnace, and 

 upon Behr for creative industrial research 

 in the great glucose industry. In 1912, it 

 was received by Frasch, and this year it 

 was awarded Gayley. 



The Gayley invention of the dry air blast 

 in the manufacture of iron involves a sav- 

 ing to the American people of from $15,- 

 000,000 to $29,000,000 annually. A mod- 

 ern furnace consumes about 40,000 cubic 

 feet of air per minute. Each grain of 

 moisture per cubic foot represents one gal- 

 lon of water per hour for each 1,000 cubic 

 feet entering per minute. In the Pitts- 

 burgh district the moisture varies from 1.83 

 grains in February to 5.94 grains in June, 

 and the water per hour entering a furnace 

 varies accordingly from 73 to 237 gallons. 

 In a month a furnace using natural air 

 received 164,500 gallons of water, whereas 

 with the dry blast it received only 25,524 

 gallons. A conservative statement accord- 

 ing to Professor Chandler is that the inven- 

 tion results in a 10 per cent, increase in out- 

 put and a 10 per cent, saving in fuel. 



Especially notable and picturesque among 



the triumphs of American industrial re- 

 search is that by means of which Prasch 

 gave to this country potential control of the 

 sulphur industry of the world. There is 

 in Calcasieu Parish, La., a great deposit of 

 sulphur 1,000 feet below the surface under 

 a layer of quicksand 500 feet in thickness. 

 An Austrian company, a French company 

 and numerous American companies had 

 tried in many ingenious ways to work this 

 deposit, but had invariably failed. Misfor- 

 tune and disaster to all connected with it 

 had been the record of the deposit to the 

 time when Frasch approached its problem 

 in 1890. He conceived the idea of melting 

 the sulphur in place by superheated water 

 forced down a boring, and pumping the 

 sulphur up through an inner tube. In his 

 first trial he made use of twenty 150 h.-p. 

 boilers grouped around the well, and the 

 titanic experiment was successful. The 

 pumps are now discarded and the sulphur 

 brought to the surface by compressed air. 

 A single well produces about 450 tons a 

 day, and their combined capacity exceeds 

 the sulphur consumption of the world. 



An equally notable solution of a tech- 

 nical problem which had long baffled other 

 investigators is the Frasch process for refin- 

 ing the crude, sulphur-bearing, Canadian 

 and Ohio oils. The essence of the invention 

 consists in distilling the different products 

 of the fractional distillation of the crude 

 oil with metallic oxides, especially oxide of 

 copper, by which the sulphur is completely 

 removed while the oils distill over as odor- 

 less and sweet as if from the best Pennsyl- 

 vania oil. The copper sulphide is roasted to 

 regenerate the copper. The invention had 

 immense pecuniary value. It sent the pro- 

 duction of the Ohio fields to 90,000 barrels 

 a day and the price of crude Ohio oil from 

 14 cents a barrel to $1.00. 



Turning from these examples of indi- 

 vidual achievement so strongly character- 



