Repository: UIHistories Project: Booklet - Addresses from Inauguration of Noyes [PAGE 51]

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50 England two years ago, where they told me that their sulphur for making the sulphuric acid used in the process came from Spain in the form of pyrites and that 8 per cent, of it left their factory as pur sulphur. In all this development th chemist has taken an ever-increasing part — in the development of new processes and the direction of old ones, and in thai analytical control of raw material and finished product winch has become indispensable in all kinds of manufacture. The soda industry in its various branche was begun and has developed as the result of chemical work applied directly to the solution of technical problems. Since then it has often happened that work b im with < the sole purpose of adding to our fund of scientific knowledge has Led to important technical industries. The founding of one of our greatest industries began in this way, at the middle of the nineteenth century. In 185(5 "William Henry Perkin, then a young man of eighteen, was working in London as the private assistant of Processor A. W. Hoffmann. He was not sati fled, however, merely to spend the day on Hoffmann's researches and he fitted up B rough laboratory in his father's houa where he could work in the evenings and in vacation time. Here, with a purely scion tifle interest, he tried some experiments which he hoped mighl lead t0 a synthesis of quinine. He got, instead, u dirty brown precipitate which must, have naed \ ry unpromising. He beoame interested in it. however, and repeated the experiment with aniline. This gave him i black and II moi unpromising product but On exam