ROMANCE OF INDUSTRY.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1732, 24 April 1913, Page 4

ROMANCE OF INDUSTRY.

CAREERS OPEN FOR MEN

DISCOVERING NATURE'S SECKETS. Mr. 11. '.Kennedy Duncan has a paper in "Harper's Magazine" on the romantic possibilities of industrial research, and the lino ciU'eers of adventure which it opens up to able men who aro on the look-out for careers at onco exciting and lisfeful.' Tile instances 110 quotes show what wonders are constantly being evolved in tho laboratories, and wnnt extraordinary. patience and skill our chemists aro devoting,to their work—the discovery of ,tho secrets of Nature. Dr. Duncan, the writer, is director of industrial research and professor of industrial chemistry at l'ittsburg University.

RESEARCH V. TRAVEL. , "Industrial research," says Dr. Duncan, "lias 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, the formulation of myths and fancies of visions t'nat lurk in" the gloomy background ot our ignorance, the daily encounter of a strange. iiorn and fauna of 11c.',- and useful lacts, and at tho 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 Tesutis of an unguessed tomorrow, and at- the journey's end not only tho possiblo pot of gold/but, ultogetner more worthy than this, a valid; excuse for living. . LET; STUDENTS VENTURE'FORTH. . "I have written really for the student whose life work has 110 c yet struck him with the bolt of conviction. If ho is not atraid of the day's adventures, let liini take his stall ot courage and his scrip of knowledge and venture forth into : these untrodden ways. .If he feels that there reinain 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' tho manufacture of cement, or by finding new uses for cobalt from the enormous cobalt residues of the iar 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 low-grade copper ores or tailings; let him make good soap from petroleum, or alcohol from natural gas; and when all tlieso aro accomplished tticre tiro still a million more. RUBBER AND AMMONIA. Here are some of the striking things which men aro doing iii their laboratories, and which they recently discussed at .ail international congress of applied .chemistry. "The fact that to-day rubber may be made synthetically, and that-the synthetic product is in every way strictly comparable with natural rubbers, aud that it may bo 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 l'ro-. fessor Bernthsen. IAII the world now knows.that wo are able.to draw upon the infinite reservoir of atmospheric . nitrogen that envelops us, and to transform it into, the fertilising substances of agriculture and into tho many manufactured substances of nitrogenous character necessary: to our civilisation.

"Through tho manufacture from atmospheric nitrogen of cyahumides by Frank ami Caro, of nitrates and nitrates by Uirkeland and Eydc, and, of the nitrides by Serpek and others, llic world has unci uestionnbly. been saved froni a gradual but. inevitable; famine through the approaching •ezliaustion of the nitrs-beds of Chile, ,'i'his work hag been accomplished during tho present century, but it is already history. Most people, however, havc.no appreciation of .the enormous yearly acceleration of demand ;'or nitrogenous .material for its user, in tun!. -Notwithstanding . tiie present utilisation, of 500,000. horse-po\rar .in the production ,of ' Norwegian nitrates, of 2,5D0,0f10 'tons, of nitre removed this year from Chile,. of 1,181,000 tons of arhiuohiimi sulphtttoproduced in industry, ;and of the unknown but large quantities of cyanamido manufactured, the ever-increasing demand' for fixed nitrogen is rising on the steepest, gradient.' : _ ' v.. J,'(Consequently, then, this new discovery, ■'signalised by Professor Bcrnthsen, 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 Khine, for the purpose of contrasting it with tho synthesis of rubber. . . - ;;

•■-. '■ WHAT TREES ARE MADE OP. "Professor Kertraud, tho representative' .of France in the congress, spoke of tie rolo played.by infinitely scmll quantities of chemical substances in biological cliem-' istry.W6 .have for many years accepted, the idea that.plants consist 6f carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen, and we have. grdwn to accept as weir the idea that I '' tlio' only requisite plant-foods are nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus. Wo have Komi supporting.this idea for years, nnd in our very practical fashion, by contributing in an ever-increasing amount millions .of dollars for fertilising .material containing these substances. \ "Professor Bertraiul shows that, in addition Id fhe three or four elements ordinarily regarded as constituting the substance of a-plant, there may be even 30 more elements out of the SO and odd that we know; that these elements may exist ii"i the plant in minute proportions,,even to loss than 1-100,000 of the plant's .weight, but that nevertheless they play nn important and necessary role in the plant's life or development. ' A J®\Y FERTILISER. "As an example of this l'act. Professor Bertram! found remarkable effects upon plant growth which followed the adding or withholding oE minute quantities-, of. manganese to the plant-food, and ho was able to trace this element to the causo of its action. We see coming into immediate use a new form of fertiliser, 'catalytic manures,' which, added to the land iii infinitesimal'proportions,' may reasonably ta expected to increase materially tin-' world's wraith through agriculture. • "The extraordinary fashion, in which science is dealing with plant life will certainly in future years place in n, parlous condition the agriculturist of our traditions.' 'Consider, for example, t!*> .lecture of Clamacian, in Vhif.h ho tells of his success in forcing plants to prodiico irlucocides, which normally do no sujjh'•'thin?-of forcing .Indian. corn to -produce salieine; or, again, of his success in modifying the production of nicotine in'the tobacco plant so as to obtain either an increase or a decrease of this alkaloid. SOJIE NEW SCHEMES. "The foregoing paragraphs constitute a very few significances taken almost 'haphazard out of the numerous transactions of this 'great congress. One has but to 'nut 1 in his thumb' anvwliere to produco tho fruit of soma noble thought embodied in accurate experimentation and presented for tho use of mankind. "To demonstrate this, one finds Cottrell's beautiful development of a process for -precipitating the noxious smeltersmoke of tho ore-smelters of the West, and of the almost equally noxious ce-ment-dust; and. again. Professor Perjvina's"benevolent research into the pcrmnnent fire-proofing of cotton goods, without in.iurv to faliric or colour, through ths utilisation of suits of tin-a research which will in the future save tho lives ■of numberless little children and the periodical incurrence of the holocaust of the theatre."

Dr.'Duncan claims that lie has proved his point as to the romance of industrial research.