ROMANCE IN THE LABORATORY.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 92, 25 April 1913, Page 4

ROMANCE IN THE LABORATORY.

Dr. R. Kennedy Duncan. Director of Industrial Research and Professor of Industrial Chemistry at Pittsburg University, has recently written a very vivid article in “Harper’s Magazine” on the romantic possibilities oi industrial research. This, ho says, is a. field of investigation which has hitherto been much neglected, though it has all the glamour that ever obtained in any age of romantic interest. He enlarges on the fine careers of adventure which it opens up to able men who are on the look-out for careers at once exciting and useful, and quotes instances to show wind wonders are constantly being evolved in Hie laboratories. For the benefit of tin 1 young student who may be induced “to take his staff of courage and his scrip of knowledge and venture forth into these untrodden ways,” lie touches on the various branches of industrial work, strongly emphasising their numerous interests. Taking a haphazard list of things that might be done he suggests applying their energies in the direction of making lubricating oils that will not carbonise', of saving the enormous waste of heat in the manufacture of cement, or of finding new uses for cobalt from the enormous cobalt residue's in the far North, or for arsenic and sulphur, or for stale bread. Those, lie' state's, are only a few out of millions. The synthetic manufacture of rubber lie considers one of the best examples of what has already been done in that line, and also the successful commercial synthesis of ammonia, both of which processes were discussed at a recent International Congress of Applied Chemistry. The article is extremely interesting reading, and Dr. Duncan undoubtedly proves bis contention regarding the romance of industrial research.