LUCRATIVE TRADE SECRETS

Evening Star, Issue 18093, 7 October 1922, Page 2

LUCRATIVE TRADE SECRETS

BUSINESS METHODS THAT HAVE MADE FORTUNES. It is not without very good reason that the “inside” business methods of certain famous firms are jealously guarded (writes James H. Young in the ‘ Weekly Scotsman ’). Fortunes are involved ju eucb secrecy, and any infringement or alleged infringement of these lucrative methods is liable to be followed by legal proceedings. A case of this description was recently in tho Court of Session, Edinburgh, when tho order of Carthusian monks in Italy were granted an interim interdict against a certain Scottish firm of wine and spirit dealers. Tho eomplainers arc the makers of the world-celebrated liqueur, “ Chartreuse,” and the interdict seeks to prohibit the defendants from tho alleged use of their trade-mark and the alleged making of certain sweetened spirits described as “ Chartreuse,” which are being marketed in this country. RENOWNED LIQUEURS.

Everybody has, of course, heard of the famous Carthusian monks, and their equally renowned “Chartreuse.” Prior to 1903 the monks had their seat at a monastery near Grenoble, in France, where they carried on, by sonic secret process, the manufacture of their widelyknown liqueurs. In the year mentioned, however, on account of religious differences, they were expelled from France, and transferred their business to Tarragona, in Italy, where Chartreuse is still manufactured. For nearly ten centuries no outsider has ever succeeded in learning the recipe for making Chartreuse. On one occasion, it is said, the Rothschild family offered tho monks a huge sum (some say a million pounds in cash) if they would disclose the secret of the preparation of the famous liqueur. The offer was declined. Indeed, beyond the fact that Chartreuse is flavored with more than fifty varieties of seeds and flowers, and that even in pre-war days it made an annual profit of nearly £200,000, no outsider knows anything" of its inside history. It ought to "be stated that most, if not all, of the profit accruing from the liqueur is distributed among various religious and charitable bodies.

Another order of monks, the Benedictines, possess an equally valuable trade * secret in the manufacture of a liqueur scarcely less profitable than Tradition has it that this recipe was lost during the Trench Revolution, during which time manufacture of the liqueur was suspended. The priceless formula turned up again, however, and the monks resumed their lucrative industry. Tor centuries, also, the Chinese and the Turks have “kept dark” two trade secrets that bid fair ever to remain mysterious, except to those immediately concerned.

One is the Chinese method of making the bright and beautiful color known as vormillion, or Chinese red; and the other is a. Turkish secret—tho inlaying of The hardest steel with gold and silver. Among the Chinese and the Turks these two secrets are guarded well. BANK OF ENGLAND’S SECRET. The Bank of England has a trade secret which all the wealth of the Indies could not purchase, nor all the untold treasure lying at the bottom of the seven seas. We refer to the manufacture of the paper whereon it prints its bank notes. No trade secret in these isles is more jealously and more carefully guarded. Countless attempts have been made to imitate it; counterfeiters—the cleverest criminal brains iu the world—have time and again been baffled in their efforts to make it. Another invaluable secret exists at Laverstoko in the printing ink, which is one of. tho most 'peculiar in existence. What is it made of ? Ah! that’s the rub. All that is known to the outside world is that charred husks and Rhenish vines are among the ingredients. Uncle Bam, too, has his bank note paper and ink trade secrets. The paper is, of course, specially made, and wild, horses could not drag the secret of tills unique process from the fakers. There is only one man*in the world who can make the printing ink which the United States use for their bank ndtes. The secret of the method was imparted to this man by his fatter, the inventor, on his death-bed, on tho understanding that he would never disclose it except to his—tho son’s —son or other nearest relative when he in turn was dying.

The American Government cannot do without this ink, as it is the only one ' which will print on the peculiar surface of the paper which is employed for the notes, and thus would-be forgers, with unique paper and unique ink to contend against, are set the stiffest task imaginable. Before the war the Government paid their ink man £IO,OOO a year. TEMPERING COPPER, Just a month or two ago the United States Steel Corporation agreed to , .pay 1,000,000 dollars, in addition to two cents a £1 royalty, to Walter Bunion, a young ex-Scrvice mechanic, with a wound stripe, for the secret of his nowly-discovemi process of tempering copper—a lost art since the days of the ancient Egyptians. Ecw trade secrets have had a more romantic origin than young Bunion’s, which has made him a rich man at the age of twenty-eight. "it is believed that all the mechanical arts will benefit enormously by Bunion's new metal, which is said to bo the hardest known, except for one called “steelite.” - It means cutting tools for lathes that will not strike sparks; it means bearings for automobiles, marine engines, locomotives, and electric motors and generators that will not burn out; it means machine parte that will not crack.

. An accident called Bunton’a attention to the possibilities of tempered copper—a trade secret that has baffled metallurgists for centuries. He chanced to find a few pages torn from an old cncyclopardia lying in a rubbish pile ready for a ijfcitch. A picture, intrigued him, and lie picked up tho crumpled sheets and began to read. It contained an account of an ancient metallurgist, incidentally a murderer, with whose death the secret of hardening copper was lost. It interested him. and he set to work.

'There are three steps in Bunion’s progress, it is understood. The first treatment of pure copper makes it harder than copper has been made before, but keeps it still ductile and pliable; the second makes it almost as hard as etecl; and the third so hard that it cannot be cut by the best steel" saws, files, or chisels. Is it any wonder that the United States Steel Corporation took only a few hours to consider Bunton’s terms of 1,000,000 dollars and two cents a £1 royalty? COLOSSAL FORTUNES AMASSED. Many, colossal fortunes have accrued from the secret processes of the mechanical arts.

Kriipp was the possessor of a trade secret which was responsible for a great part of the enormous fortune of nearly forty millions sterling which be left behind him. It was a method of hardening steel which made the Krupp armor immensely superior to anything else of the kind that had been then made—superior even to the Harvoyisod steel which was used in our own Navy. Hot Krupp having obtained a unique reputation IV Ins armor by means of his new process, was clever enough to make still more money out of tho invention by selling tho right to use it to a number of other firms. In our own country the Crawshays have amassed prodigious wealth from the iron used in our Navy, all of which comes from the great works owned by this well-known, family. The metal mads there is purer than that produced elsewhere; but the secret of this purity has never been disclosed, though enormous prices have been offered for it. It remains in the family, to whom it must be worth soma millions.