Chemists

Last week, at Los Angeles, the American Chemical Society held its 70th annual convention.

Matter. Two years ago, Dr. Willis R. Whitney, head researcher for the General Electric Co., addressed the Society on The Vacuum--There's Something in It. Last week his title was Matter--Is there Anything in It? Very little, was the answer. Though a drop of water contains some three billion trillion (21 ciphers) hydrogen atoms, there is little that is really "solid" present. If each atom became as large as a raindrop, "they would cover the earth with a foot of water." Yet, "if we made ,one of these hydrogen atoms, which we used to think of as hard and indivisible, so large that it became a yard in diameter, nothing would yet be appreciable, because its electron would still be only a pinhead in size and its nucleus 2,000 times smaller. So while you might distinguish the orbit, its planet [electron] and sun [nucleus] would still be nearly invisible. In other words, practically all of the hydrogen atom is apparently space . ." .as empty as the sky, almost as empty as a perfect vacuum. . . . Atoms begin to look like solar and planetary systems with different groups of positive and negative charges at their centres."

Rashness. Dr. Whitney based much of his address upon recent findings of Drs. J. J. Thompson and R. A. Millikan. The latter, director of the laboratory of the California Institute of Technology at Pasadena, also spoke: "We must learn to get away from over-assertiveness and dogmatism, whether scientific or theological."

War Gases. The Society went "strongly" on record against ratification of the Geneva protocol forbidding the use of poison gases in warfare. Reasons: "National safety and on the grounds of humanity."*

Goiter. Seaweed in the diet would prevent goiter, in some degree cure it. Half the young girls between the Atlantic Coast and the Rocky Mountains suffer from incipient goiter. Girls on the Pacific Coast are remarkably free from it So said Dr. J. W. Turrentine, U. S. Department of Agriculture.

"Synthol." The Du Font interests would manufacture, the Standard Oil Co. of N. J. distribute, a new synthetic motor fuel to be called "synthol," made from coal, petroleum or lignite. To burn synthol, a new automobile motor had been devised, the most powerful of its size, very light, needing no gear shift, emitting no poisonous fumes, having no carbon troubles, getting 50 miles per fuel gallon, more like a steam engine than an internal combustion engine. The General Motors Corporation would manufacture this motor, install it in all its cars (Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, Oakland, Oldsmobile). So said Dr. T. A. Boyd, General Motors Research Department.

Denial. Dr. Boyd's "synthol" report was given the lie direct. Upon reading Dr. Boyd's statements in the newspapers, Alfred P. Sloan Jr., President of the General Motors Corporation, said: "Ridiculous on their face, for General Motors has recently announced a new series of cars, which should be sufficient answer." Said Walter C. Teagle, oil President: "Insofar as it refers to the Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey, there is no basis in fact for the despatch."

"Twelve-O-Eighteen-Fifty." Nevertheless, there came to light further facts. Last spring, when Germany began to flood the U. S. with synthetic alcohol (methanol) at prices far below anything U. S. competitors could meet, the U. S. Department of Commerce set about "preparing a pamphlet on the subject and assigned its Chemist Penning to rummage among the 4,500 German patents taken over in 1917 for $250,000 ($55 apiece) by the Chemical Foundation, Inc. Last week it became known that Penning had found among the 4,500 an interrelated group of 13 patents, the key one of which, Patent No. 1,201,850, Producing Compounds of Carbon and Nitrogen, he deciphered as what he was hunting for. In the generalizations permitted by U. S. patent laws, "Twelve-O-Eighteen-Fifty," as the document has come to be called, outlined a synthetic process for alcohol.

At once experiments were begun. Nine U. S. manufacturers, including the Du Pont interests, speedily obtained licenses from the Chemical Foundation, Inc., to use "Twelve-O-Eighteen-Fifty." The Du Ponts rushed work on a plant at Clinchfield, W. Va., for research toward other revolutionary discoveries besides "synthol" thought to be latent in the new formulae.

*Doubtless the chemists had in mind gases that would anaesthetize troops, save them from destruction by bullets or explosives.