Sources of Nitrogen Compounds in the United States ¹

Abstract

THE problem of how to turn the vast store of uncombined nitrogen which exists in the atmosphere into useful products may be said to have been only seriously attacked within the lifetime of the present generation. It had its origin in the growing demand for forms of combined nitrogen suitable for use in the arts, and more particularly in agriculture, the oldest of all the arts. But circumstances arising out of the present world-wide struggle, affecting in greater or less degree every nation, but more particularly those engaged in the war, have forced the problem into still greater prominence by demonstrating how intimately it is bound up with the question of national defence. Indeed, as regards the Central Powers, their very existence is dependent upon it, as they now painfully realise.