What Industry Owes to Chemical Science

Abstract

THE mere expansion to its present size of the slender volume which contained the original twenty articles issued in 1918 gives a striking measure of the scale on which the contribution of chemistry to industrial progress has expanded during that period. Allowance must be made for a considerable amount of overlap and repetition in the different articles, but against this there are some surprising omissions. Industries such as aviation and the electrical industry pass unnoticed, and the synthetic fibres scarcely receive the treatment that is their due, nylon in particular being barely mentioned. The treatment of both textile and of synthetic resins or plastics is sketchy. Although detergents and like compounds are discussed in two articles, the water-repellent finishes and the crease-resistant treatments appear to have been overlooked. Only an incidental reference by Mr. Silvester and by Dr. Dunstan gives any hint of the importance which petroleum and acetylene have now come to assume as the raw materials of organic synthesis.

What Industry Owes to Chemical Science

Third edition, based on the scheme of the first and second editions by Richard B. Pilcher Frank Butler-Jones. Pp. viii + 372 + 13 plates. (Cambridge: W. Heffer and Sons, Ltd., 1945.) 18s. net.