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Show rfODRRN W f gIRACLBS Synthetic Chemistry, After Learning the Secret p Making Royal Purple, Succeeds in Producing ) All the Colors of the Rainbovr (Told In Eight Sketches) By JOHN RAYMOND T.I W iiO. V COLOR In the dim ages of history when man first felt the desire for beauty, traders searched the world for dyestuffs, jewels, jew-els, perfumes, spices and precious woods. The risk of these voyages was great and only princes or nobles could afford the fruits of ventures to the far corners of the world. No man of humble origin could aspire to the rich crimsoned linen, the Royal Purple of ancient Tyre, retailing at $600 a pound. Royal Purple is an age-old insignia of aristocracy. This dye was secreted by a small shellfish on the Eastern coast of the Mediterranean and here the enterprising merchants of Tyre formed a dye monopoly equaled only by the German Cartel. A bit of the whitish liquid secreted by this mollusk, if spread upon a cloth and exposed to the air and sunlight turns first green, next blue and then purple. If washed with an alkali soap it becomes the magnificent Crimson worn by the Cardinals and Princes of the Catholic Church. Tyrian purple vanished from the marts of the world with the fall of Tyre. Synthetic chemistry learned the secret se-cret of making Royal Purple as, indeed, in-deed, it learned to manufacture indigo, the same deep blue that may be seen today in museums, the winding sheets of Egyptian mummies. It was an achievement to snatch its distinctive color from royalty and to rival the best vegetable indigo of the ancients an-cients but modern chemistry has gone far beyond that. Today any kind of dye found in nature can be made in the laboratory. Indeed, among the.900 shades and colors being manufactured there are tints that it would be difficult diffi-cult to discern in the rainbow, -psp-ra These colors all come from coal tar MUjSDgfe' but after it is un-tjE$?flB& un-tjE$?flB& dcrstood that coal MPra?Vv5f tar is the quintes- ferfB sence f tne forests ga?rejK fife?, of untold ages the 'Zrfrf fcJ vW rfftf" 'eat does not aP" ?f raSj pear to be so mar- J JjZ!flpMtji And still for ccn-HivVKi ccn-HivVKi tur'es tms country $MlvN Ml has been wasting '4$9'jM2$- vast quantities of the precious mate-32 mate-32 I rial. In fact, the (Released by the Institute of A; ma nufactureof v v j, j , coke, in which pro-cess pro-cess coal tar is ob- .' gjj tained, is the only , J JrL 1 metallurgical oper- ci frL""""i ation that America f?(T ptl continues to con- JMwaJSrl duct, in a large 'ffiyfim mw measure, after the ( j flfaW(- manner of a cen- jf JilLiPLssyisI tury ago. In 1915 ll Uotvaored J there were 41,500,- j I Mows I 000 tons of coke I ) produced in this Ml NjiS2Si' country for which 111 almost 61,000,000 ' r VIII, , I tons of coal were used. Because of the enormous demands for war materials modern by-product ovens were constructed and in 1919 more than 52 per cent of our coke supply sup-ply came from these ovens. It is estimated esti-mated that for every ton of coke made in modern by-product ovens there is saved in fuel alone 825 pounds of coal. When a house-holder burns a ton of coal he has sacrificed something like 11,000 cubic feet of gas, nine gallons of tar, twenty-five pounds of ammonium sulphate, 2.08 gallons of pure benzol and 0.56 gallons of pure toluol. In our industrial life the use of coal derivatives is just beginning to be felt. The rubber industry depends upon these products for solvents, compounding com-pounding ingredients and softeners. Practically all types of paint now use a derivative of coal. Printing inks, shoe polishes, brake linings, dry cleaners, clean-ers, perfumes, explosives, linoleums, glues, pastes and photographic developers, de-velopers, contain coal products as basic ingredients. The paper industry, the soap business, and the shoe manufacturer manu-facturer would be in serious difficulties without the by-products of coal tar. The electrical industry would lose its chief source of insulating material and the doctors and druggists would be without a sufficient supply of phenol to make their supply of everyday drugs. Coal tar, the refuse of ancient vegetable vege-table kingdoms, is valuable because it produces a galaxy of brilliant colors, not so much for the colors themselves but because in producing them so many intermediates are developed that are of inestimable worth to the industrial indus-trial life of the nation, mcrican Business, New York) |