Abstract
THE stimulating effect on industrial research caused by the prospect of immediate material gain is strikingly illustrated by the progress of the cyanide industry. Until cyanide of potassium was applied to the treatment of gold ores, comparatively little interest was taken in its manufacture. The consumption amounted to about fifty tons a year only, and the old expensive and wasteful methods of obtaining it from ferrocyanide which had been made by the use of nitrogenous organic substances were deemed sufficient for the purpose. When the demand was rapidly growing in the nineties there was a rush of investigators to discover new and cheaper methods of manufacture. A fair amount of success was attained, and some thousands of tons of cyanide are now produced annually in Great Britain and Germany and sold at one-third the former price. The older processes have been abandoned and new ones introduced, and, although some doubt still remains as to the future of the industry, the field for useful research has been narrowed, and once again offers little attraction to the chemical “pot-hunter.” Comparatively little cyanide is produced in France, however, and apparently it was the apathy of their fellow-countrymen on the subject which induced MM. Robine and Lenglen to write the book which has just been translated.
The Cyanide Industry Theoretically and Practically Considered.
By R. Robine M. Lenglen. Translated by J. Arthur Leclerc, Ph.D., with an appendix by C. E. Munroe, Ph.D. Pp. xi × 408; illustrated. (New York: John Wiley and Sons; London: Chapman and Hall, Ltd., 1906.) Price 17s. net.
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ROSE, T. The Cyanide Industry Theoretically and Practically Considered . Nature 74, 195 (1906). https://doi.org/10.1038/074195a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/074195a0