Repository: UIHistories Project: Dedication - Ceramic Engineering - Journal Article [PAGE 9]

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J a n . . 1917

THE

JOURNAL

OF

INDUSTRIAL AND

ENGINEERING

CHEMISTRY

a

not see and that could not sec him. He condensed mighty gases into compact form that he might suddenly loosen them with all their terrific power for his use, to do his bidding, to work bis vengeance. He learned to govern them absolutely, to bind more power into a smaller package. When their smoke bothered him he stopped their smoking and made smokeless powder, so that the men he fought could not locate his hidden retreat. Man is like all animals in that he fights but unlike any animal in that be laughs, and this trait of his leads him to other things than war and slaughter. Thank God not all his conquests ore by war. There are other ways than by blood, others than by physical force. Chemistry can work out other things than high explosives, things useful and beneficent rather than destructive and abhorrent. Mechanical and Chemical Arts have been advanced far beyond the fondest dreams of our fathers. Man talks across the ocean, travels under its surface, flies in the air; from using the lightning as a plaything he makes it his servant and commands its mighty power, binding and harnessing it to do his bidding, even before he really knows just what it is. He hunts out its laws and, knowing them, compels it to do his will. Utilizing the force of gravity in our lakes and rivers, he has harnessed that power, and, compelling it to make lightning, has lit up his cities with it and turned night to day with water. What would your grandfather have thought of the statement that the waters of Lake Michigan would eventually light the city of Chicago? Jules Verne's dream is no longer a dream and ships go under the water. Darius Green and his flying machine are no longer a joke, for man flies at an hundred miles an hour, outstripping the birds, and not that only but he fights other men there. From the big things to the little, the invisible, man has made a new eye and sought out the little, invisible, teeming microscopic life; has hunted disease germs and, having found them, has fought them and conquered. Life has thus been prolonged and saved. The great doctrine of prevention has been established without which such great achievements as the Panama Canal could not have been accomplished. Manufacture has always been dependent on research, from the time of the first manufacturer, and ceramic research is one of the oldest of all such lines employed. It was not a lack of research but of quality and extent and the effort and energy employed. Ceramists have always been enthusiasts, optimists in the extreme, dreamers. The very first experimenter when he, or more probably she, found she could shape a cup in a plastic mass of clay, hesitated not at all but proceeded at once in the attempt to make a better one, in the which, every ceramist since has followed her example. Nothing was so good that a better was not sought. Perfection was always sought but never acknowledged as achieved. Always a better body, better glass, better shape and greater beauty were sought. Utility and beauty were the objects ever pursued. To make the best possible has been the effort and to this end all the workers have wrought tirelessly, enthusiastically and intelligently to the very best that was in them. Their effort was right but they had small opportunity. It was individual and not collective effort and the problems were too much for an individual; team work was required. At first there was no fund of research accumulated and it had to be hunted out, built up and made available. This necessity being apparent, this first discoverer of the fact that clay was plastic, could be fashioned, made into a cup that would hold water, did not stop. It was a memorable discovery but not final. The discoverer, having the true spirit of the potter, kept a t it and made the further discovery that it would dry and harden. Undoubtedly, the very next discovery was the disconcerting one that it would wet up and dissolve when wet again. Long research must have been exercised here to correct this which, however, resulted finally in utilizing the great mystery of fire to fix it lastingly. This changed its whole

nature and made it Indeed u new material, useful, beautiful and lasting. From the first experimenter on, through countless ages, beauty of form has been the objective. Utility was a pressing requisite but effort to make it beautiful was always shown, and protected and preserved the article when made, causing it to be treasured and cared for. I have no doubt but that the first discoverer, in fashioning her cup, shaped its form to lines of beauty, possibly crude but seeking beauty none the less. Ceramic research had thus progressed to the forming of a cup, doubtless crude, probably porous, but a great achievement and prophetic of the future. Later on research brought out the quality of vitrification—nonabsorbent and waterproof—and, later on, wedded the cup to glass and glazed it. This one thing of the glaze bound the art irrevocably to close ceramic research and committed every succeeding potter to cast aside all else in the fervent, tireless effort to surpass, to make a better body and a better glaze than any one before him had made, and, in his fervent, tireless effort to surpass, and in bis enthusiasm to this end, make any sacrifice, endure any privation, surmount any obstacle and never give up hope. Pallisy was not the only potter who burned furniture. All potters have done so: burned furniture, bridges, luxuries, clothes, necessities even, and to-day, all over the world, they are feeding their kilns with clothes and automobiles and sacrificing their luxuries and comfort, they are eating dry crusts instead of cake, that they may feed their kilns, try their experiments and make something better and more beautiful than has yet been wrought. All this has brought clay wares into a very extended use. You drink your morning coffee from a cup of clay, more than a thousand times a year you eat your food from a plate of clay, you wash your face in a clay bowl and you take your bath in a clay tub. All the modern use of electricity would fail were it not for clay insulators. The paper you write on and the paper on your walls are largely composed of it and even the sugar you put in yout tea is more than likely to have made its acquaintance but in 'the latter case not through ceramic research. While the ceramic art is perhaps the most- ancient of al the arts of to-day it has been probably, through the past ages the most secretive. Progress in it has been, of necessity, by means of a multitude of experiments, mostly of necessity failures, being wrought so crudely and blindly. Occasionally one proves good and capable of reproduction. Many were freaks and depended on chance conditions which were not present on the next attempt and were, therefore, discontinued and lost. Sometimes, however, these were traced out and led to new processes, thus utilizing these very accidents. When these processes stood the tests and produced a new effect, the process was surrounded by every possible safeguard to hold it secret; often so closely guarded that it was lost on the death of the discoverer. Often, too, it was handed down, from father to son, as a family heirloom, thus remaining in use for generations. Imitation, however, prevailed more than invention. Men feigned idiocy to get into factories, living on crusts and being kicked and buffeted about, that they might finally worm out the secret and then go and imitate. Even where invention was used it was employed in a blind fashion, feeling the way with this and that material, and with very little real knowledge as to real possibilities. So earnest was the work, however, and so extensive the experimentation, that much of good was accomplished, and these experimenters are entitled to very great credit for having, under such conditions, wrought out methods many of which are used to this day. But even the excessive secretiveness of the potter has had to yield to the modern spirit. Men have become broad-minded enough to subserve their personal interests to the good of their Art: to add their contribution to that of the one who had gone before them, and not only that, hut to hand over their contribution to the fellow coming after them, and thus get the whole,

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