Repository: UIHistories Project: Booklet - Addresses from Inauguration of Noyes [PAGE 50]

EXTRACTED TEXT FROM PAGE:

I

The da ind \ is one of tfa fi large mi il industries to I I on a tntific basi When \ ider thai the la for our p i DOM p cally all mad.' from salt, it ms hard 1 believe thai on hundn I years i < > -was made almost exclusively from the | >tash of W d I < or from natural soda, th supply of which w 3 very limited. T thin! we are for id to the conclusion that our great-grandmothers used wry much less soap than we do. The first factory for making soda from salt was built by Le Blanc in France in 1791, but, partly because of the political conditions at the time of the Revolution, partly for other reasons, the factory was not a success. Le Blanc himself died a few years later, in extreme poverty, and it was not till 1823 that Muspratt established the industry successfully in England. From that time the Le Blanc process held undisputed sway till the early seventies. Since then it has fought a losing battle with the ammonia soda process, and to-day there is not a Le Blanc factory to be found in America. Now the ammonia ';i is, in turn, being displaced rapidly by elect rolytic soda. This sort of competition is typical of that which occurs in many mica] manufactures. In the case o\* Le Blanc soda it has been a most powerful incentive toward the improvement of the process- It, has resulted in developing improved mechanical appliances Cor carrying o u t ||1(. operations, in the recovery of tin* hydrochloric acid and its use in the manufacture of chloride of lime and in tin* re/ of sulphur from the calcium sub hide, I visited a Le Blanc taotory in