ROMANCE OF INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH.

Otago Witness, Issue 3085, 30 April 1913, Page 76

ROMANCE OF INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH.

FINE CAREERS OPEN FOR MEN IN SEARCH OF ROMANCE—DISCOVERING NATURE’S SECRETS. Dr R. Kennedy Duncan has a most inspiriting paper in Harper's Magazine on the romantic possibilities of Industrial Research and the fine careers of adventure which it opens up to able men who are on the lookout for careers at once exciting and useful. Tlie instances he quotes show what wonders are constantly being evolved in the laboratories and what extraordinary patience and skill our chemists are devoting to their work —the discovery of the secrets of Nature. Dr Duncan, the writer, is Director of Industrial Research and Professor of Industrial Chemistry at Pittsburg University. —Research v. Travel. — “Industrial research,” says Dr Duncan, “has to-day all the glamour that ever obtained In any age of romantic interest — the daily travel along untrodden and always difficult and sometimes dangerous ways, tiie formulation of myths and fancies of visions that lurk in the gloomy background of ignorance, the daily encounter of a strange flora and fauna of new and useful facts, and at the journey’s end the possible pot of gold.” Dr Duncan shows that there are in industrial research matters of new and curious and useful import that arise from travel along untrodden ways, the fascinating results of an unguessed to-morrow, and at the journey’s end not only the possible pot of gold, but, altogether more worthy than tins, a valid excuse for living. —Let Students Venture Forth. — “I have written really for the student whose life work has not yet struck him with the bolt of conviction. If he is not afraid of the day’s adventures, let him take his staff of courage and his scrip of knowledge and venture forth into these untrodden ways. If he feels that there remain no more worlds to conquer, let him begin by making lubricating oils that will not carbonise, or by saving the enormous waste of heat in' the manufacture of cement, or by finding new uses for cobalt from the enormous cobalt residues of the far north, or for arsenic and sulphur which to-day are or could be produced in enormous quantities, or for stale bread; or let him find a really valid method of extracting copper from lowgrade copper ores or tailings; let him make good soap from petroleum, or alcohol from natural gas; .and when all these are accomplished there are stiff a million more.” . . —Rubber and Ammonia. — Here are some of the striking things which men are doing in their laboratories, and Which they recently discussed at an International Congress of Applied Chemistry -. ‘“The fact that to-day rubber may be made synthetically, and that the synthetic product is in every way strict!} comparable with natural rubbers, and that it may be made commercially into automobile tyres and into all the multiform objects of rubber manufacture, has been verified by many chemists working independently, and is positively beyond dispute. “Another phase of the methods of industrial research, equally interesting but widely different, appears in the successful commercial synthesis of ammonia as presented before the same congress by Professor Bernthsen. All the world now knows that we are able to draw upon the infinite reservoir of atmospheric nitrogen that envelops as, and to transform it into the fertilising substances of agriculture and into the many manufactured substances of nitrogenous character necessary to our civilisation. “Through the manufacture from atmospheric nitrogen of cyanamides by Frank and Caro, of nitrates and nitrites by Birkeland and Eyde, and of the nitrides by Scrpck and others, the world has unquestionably been saved from a gradual but inevitable famine through the approaching exhaustion of the nitre-beds of Chile. This work has been accomplished during the present century, but it is already history. Most people, however,- have no appreciation of the enormous yearly acceleration of demand for nitrogenous material lor its uses in agriculture. Notwithstanding the present utilisation of 500.000 horse power in the production of Norwegian nitrates, of 2,500,000 tons of nitre removed this year from Chile, of 1.181.000 tons of ammonium sulphate produced in industry, and of the unknown but largo quantities of cyanamide manufactured, the ever-increasing demand for fixed nitrogen is rising on the steepest gradient. “Consequently, then, this new discovery, signalised by Professor Bernthsen, the commercial synthesis of ammonia from its elements nitrogen and hydrogen, is of grateful acceptance to a needy world. i cite this discovery, for the practice of which suitable factories are now rising on the banks of the Rhine, for the innpose of contrasting it with the synthesis of rubber. —What Trees arc Made Of.— “Professor Bertrand, the representative of France in the congress, spoke of the role played by infinitely small quantities of chemical substances in’ biological chemistry. We have for many years accepted the idea that plants consist of oniiion, oxvgen. hydrogen, and nitrogen, and we have grown to accept as well the idea that the onlv requisite plant-foods are nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus. We

have been supporting this idea for years, and in our very practical fashion, by contributing in an ever-increasing amount millions of dollars for fertilising material containing these substances. ‘'Professor Bertrand shows that, in addition to the three or four elements ordinarily regarded as constituting the substance of a plant, there may be even 30 more elements out of the 80 and odd that we know; that these elements may exist in the plant in minute proportions, even to less than 1/100,000 of the plant’s weight, but that nevertheless they play an important and necessary role in the plant’s life or development. —A New Fertiliser. — ‘•'As an example of this fact. Professor Bertrand found remarkable effects upon plant growth which followed the adding or withholding of minute quantities of manganese to the plant-food, and he was able to trace this element to the cause of its action. We see coming into immediate use a new form of fertiliser, ‘catalytic manures,’ which, added to the land in infinitesimal proportions, may reasonably be expected to increase materially the world’s wealth through agriculture. “The extraordinary fashion in which science is dealing with plant life will certainly in future years place in a parlous condition the agriculturist of our traditions. Consider, for example, the lecture of Ciamician, in which ne tells of his success in forcing plants to produce glucocides, which normally do no such thing; of forcing Indian corn to produce salicine; or, again, of his success in modifying the production of nicotine in the tobacco plant so as to obtain cither an increase or a decrease of this alkaloid. —Some New Schemes.— The foregoing paragraphs constitute a very few significances taken almost haphazard out of the numerous transactions of this great congress. One has bat to ‘put in his thumb’ anywhere to produce the fruit of some noble thought embodied in accurate experimentation and presented for the use of mankind. “To demonstrate this, one finds Cottrell’s beautiful development of a process for precipitating the noxious smeltersmoke of the ore-smelters of the West, and of the almost equally noxious cement dust; and, again, Professor Perkins’s benevolent research into the permanent fireproofing of cotton goods, without injury to fabric or colour, through the utilisation of salts of tin —a. research which will in the future save the lives of numberless little children and the periodical recurrence of the holocaust of the theatre.” Dr Duncan well claims that he has proved his point as to the romance of industrial research.