﻿Acetylene. 9S 



patents by many months, and describes completely the 

 whole chemistry of the manufacture of acetylene. 



No mention is made of Moissan's work in the reports 

 published by the acetylene company in a lecture by Will- 

 son and Suckert before the Franklin Institute, and in a 

 lecture before the London Society of Arts by Prof. Lewes. 

 In these reports Mr. Willson is represented as having 

 discovered the mode of formation of calcium carbide in 

 the electric furnace by the reducing action of carbon 

 upon refractory oxides. It is stated that the experiments 

 were begun by Mr. Willson in 1888. 



In such matters dates of discovery can only be estab- 

 lished by publications, which in this case are found to be 

 in the Patent Office reports. Mr. Willson took out four 

 patents in 1889-92 for electric smelting processes, and in 

 several of them the use of carbon with refractory oxides 

 is specified. The design seems to have been to make 

 aluminum and its alloys and perhaps other metals. No 

 mention is made in the reports of carbide of calcium nor 

 of acetylene. Dickerson and Suckert, December 31, 1894 

 nine months after Moissan's publication, patented a pro- 

 cess for evolving and condensing acetyline made from the 

 carbide of calcium. And June 18, 1895, is the date of 

 the first patent by T. L. Willson in which the report 

 specifies the production of carbide of calcium. 



Many statements have been published concerning com- 

 mercial aspects of the new enterprise, but it will suffice 

 to say here that it has not yet reached a stage at which 

 the vital question of the cost to the consumer of the car- 

 bide of calcium can be fixed by the quotation of a market 

 price. Small quantities can be purchased for experimental 

 purposes in New York at a price of $5 per 100 lbs. But. 

 the manufacture in the United States does not exceed 

 one ton per diem and is carried on at Spray, in North- 

 Carolina, a somewhat inaccessible place, and no complete- 

 account of the process has yet appeared in the best-known. 



