Historic chemical icons become landmarks

A project of the society's Division of the History of Chemistry, the program's aim is to compile "an annotated roster for chemists and chemical engineers, students, educators, historians, and travelers."

The first icon to enter the annotated roster in 1993 was Leo Baekeland's original Bakelizer. The unit sits in the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. The vessel, known to its early operators as "Old Faithful," is the original steam-pressure vessel Baekeland used to commercialize the world's first synthetic plastic-the phenol formaldehyde resin called Bakelite. The material opened the door to an era of synthetic materials, and it found its way into nonconducting radio parts, light bulb sockets, and automobile distributor caps.

Other icons have entered the list since. In 1994, the society entered two new landmarks on its register. The first, the William H. Chandler Chemistry Laboratory, is on the campus of Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa. The lab, built in 1884- 85, set the standard for laboratory construction and design for a half-century after, and it served as the setting for advances in chemical education. Novel features in the lab included steam-heated reaction baths, modular benches, transom-regulated ventilation, vertical service chases, and below-ground storage for fuel, ashes, and chemicals.

The second landmark recognized in 1994 was the Joseph Priestley House in Northumberland, Pa. The English chemist, who built the house in 1795, did important work on oxygen and other gases. He had emigrated to the U.S. because of his religious views and sympathy for the French and American Revolutions. Considered the cradle of American chemical research, the home housed 1,600 volumes and a chemical laboratory where Priestley first isolated carbon monoxide. A centennial celebration in 1874 at Priestley's home of the discovery of oxygen ultimately led many of its organizers to found ACS two years later.

The fourth chemical landmark, and the first of four designations in 1995, was the designation of Edward W. Morley's research on the atomic weight of oxygen. ACS placed a plaque at the 19th-century site of Morley's laboratory in Adelbert Hall on the campus of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. Next to receive a plaque marking its historical significance was the Seaford, Del., site of DuPont's first commercial nylon plant in 1939.

The society then conferred the landmark designation on Eastman Chemical's coal-to-chemicals facility-the first to produce acetyl chemicals from coal rather than petroleum. The plant started production in 1983 after eight years of research and coal gasification process development prompted by the Arab oil embargo of 1973. The use of locally mined high-sulfur coal displaces 1.5 million barrels of oil previously required per year to produce acetyl chemicals.

And also in 1995, the UOP Riverside Laboratory in McCook, Ill., gained recognition. Conceived as a quiet academic retreat, the lab attracted leading petroleum scientists who secured 8,790 patents between 1921 and 1955, many relating to the understanding of hydrocarbon rearrangement, isomerization, and polymerization.

In 1996, ACS entered the Williams-Miles History of Chemistry Collection at Harding University, Searcy, Ark., into the landmarks program. The library contains more than 2,000 volumes on chemistry published between 1600 and 1900.

Three other landmarks entered the program in 1996. One commemorated the Houdry process for the catalytic conversion of crude petroleum to high-octane gasoline, with a plaque placed at the Marcus Hook, Pa., refinery of Sun Co. In 1937, the refinery installed the first large-scale catalytic unit to transform crude oil into gasoline. Eugene Houdry's process, the basic principles of which are still applied to the manufacture of gasoline, produced a higher octane fuel than the thermal cracking methods widely practiced in the 1920s and '30s.

Also in 1996, ACS presented a plaque to Sherwin-Williams, in Cleveland, commemorating the 1941 introduction of Kem-Tone wall finish, the first commercially successful, multi-million-gallon, waterborne interior wall paint with colors that could withstand rubbing and washing. And in the same year, it commemorated the Sohio acrylonitrile process. In 1957, researchers at Sohio (now BP America) developed a single-step method to produce acrylonitrile at the company's Warrensville Lab in Warrensville Heights, Ohio. The availability of plentiful and inexpensive acrylonitrile led to dramatic growth in derivative acrylic thermoplastics and synthetic fibers.

In 1997, ACS placed five landmarks on its roster. The first marked the commercialization of radiation chemistry by founders of Raychem Corp., Redwood City, Calif. The plaque placed with Raychem recognizes the successful use of ionizing radiation in 1957 to cross-link polymeric materials to give them special properties, such as strength, toughness, and improved high-temperature performance.

The second plaque ACS placed in 1997 is at the replica of Evens Mill in Midland, Mich., to commemorate Herbert H. Dow's electrolytic production of bromine. Dow perfected a commercial electrolytic process using brines from a well at the site, now the home of the Herbert H. Dow Museum. The Dow Chemical Co., founded to commercialize another product of Herbert Dow's electrolytic experiments with brine-chlorine-celebrated its 100th anniversary in 1997 as well.

The third plaque commemorates the 1886 production of aluminum metal by electrochemistry. Presented to Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, the plaque celebrates Charles Martin Hall's success in producing aluminum metal by passing an electric current through a solution of aluminum oxide in molten cryolite. Hall conducted his experiments in a woodshed behind his family's home in Oberlin. His work was the basis for an aluminum industry in North America.

The landmark program added Gilman Hall at the University of California, Berkeley, to the roster. This research and teaching facility, dedicated in 1918, provided a setting for advances in physical, inorganic, and nuclear chemistry. Gilbert N. Lewis, who came to Berkeley to head the college of chemistry and chemical engineering, helped advance the university's strength in chemical thermodynamics and molecular structure. Willard F. Libby, trained as a nuclear chemist at Gilman Hall in the 1930s, received the 1960 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for carbon-14 dating. Glenn T. Seaborg also trained at Gilman Hall, and, as a faculty member in 1941, he identified the first known isotope of plutonium with colleagues Joseph W. Kennedy, Edwin M. McMillan, and Arthur C. Wahl.

The most recently placed plaque commemorates the discovery of the antiulcer compound cimetidine. A joint designation of ACS and the U.K.'s Royal Society of Chemistry, it is the first international landmark. Smith Kline & French (now SmithKline Beecham) research scientists carried out the initial work at company labs at Welwyn Garden City in the U.K. in the 1970s. In 1998, a plaque will also be placed in Philadelphia, where company scientists carried out the subsequent development of a commercially viable synthesis route. From this work came Tagamet, a histamine receptor agonist now available over the counter, one of the first drugs to be designed logically from first principles rather than based on a plant or microbial extract.