While Carl Bosch was growing up his eventual employer was involved in the most expensive and elaborate product development ever undertaken, the creation of synthetic indigo. He joined this team shortly after they had commercialized the process, so it's clear that large-scale chemistry was already under way. But Bosch is entitled to the title "Father of Chemical Engineering" because of the changes he brought to that enterprise, when he started work industrial chemistry involved large tanks and tools no more developed than what might be found in a farm workshop. What Bosch added was the ability to deal with large quantities of materials at high temperature and pressure. Steel vessels broke down under the heat and chemical activity of making ammonia, he designed a system where the steel vessel was under pressure but no heat, and the reaction was confined inside an inner vessel that could take the heat and chemistry but not the pressure - by putting one inside the other there was no pressure on the inner vesel, it balanced inside and out. No big deal? In 1913 the only commercial fertilizer was Chile saltpetre, and it was running out. In 1915 BASF was turning out ammonium sulphate which was not only more potent but less expensive, and the price of saltpetre itself was dropping. The net effect was that more people could eat. Yes, that's a big deal, and the Nobel committee recognized it by breaking with tradition and awarding the 1931 prize in chemistry for engineering rather than research for the first time.
Today marks the cataclysmic eruption of Krakatoa, the third largest known in recorded history. The explosion of the volcano of Santorin (Thera) in the Aegean Sea in the fifteenth century BC was at least six times greater, but won't appear in Twisted History because we don't know what day it happened. The volcanic explosion of Mount Vesuvius on 24 August 79 was also larger.
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1689 - John Milton's books supporting the revolt against King Charles II were burnt by the hangman at London.
1776 - In the Battle of Long Island 22,000 British and Hessian troops under Sir William Howe defeated a revolutionary force of about 10,000 led by George Washington. Queens was occupied by the British for the next seven years.
1859 - The first intentional oil well in the United States strikes oil at 69 feet in Titusville, Pennsylvania. Before Colonel Edwin Drake's find, oil was mostly a contaminant in brine wells. World's first commercial oil well was in Ontario the year before.
1883 - After a series of volcanic eruptions since May, and three larger eruptions in the previous twelve hours, the walls of the volcano collapsed allowing seawater into the magma chamber. The phreatomagmatic explosion resulting from the superheated steam was estimated at 100 megatons (5,000 times the Hiroshima bomb), the sound was heard up to 2900 miles away. The tsunami reached heights of 130 feet, destroying 163 coastal villages in Java and Sumatra, drowning 36,000. Most of the island was sent into the air, several fragments remain and one new active volcano.
1928 - The Kellogg-Briand Pact renouncing war as an instrument of national policy was signed at Paris, France by plenipotentiaries of the United States, Australia, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Great Britain, India, Irish Free State, Italy, New Zealand, and Union of South Africa. Eventually 62 nations signed.
1942 - Oxford University announces the discovery of a chemical substance called "Penicillin," described as being a hundred times more fatal to bacteria than sulfa drugs.
Anniversary of the Market Women's Revolt, Guinea - When Sekou Touré decreed in 1977 that all agricultural produce would be delivered to state-run cooperatives, the "market women" in Conakry rioted. The riots spread to other towns, three governors were killed, and Touré quickly legalized small-scale trade. The country has continued to rank last or next-to-last in the UN's Quality of Life Index, but you can buy vegetables in the market of Conakry.
1874
- Carl Bosch, German chemist - Born to peasant stock at Cologne
(Köln), Germany and grew up there, father insisted Carl work at an iron
works before college, studied metallurgy and mechanical engineering at
Technische Hochschule in Charlottenburg 1894 - 1896, doctorate in chemistry
at Leipzig University 1896 - 1898. Employed at Badische Anilin- und Sodafabrik
(BASF), Ludwigshafen, Rhine in 1899 working on the process of manufacturing
synthetic indigo. This was the most expensive product development at that
time, involving the investment of 18 million gold marks over 17 years.
Began work on fixing nitrogen, first working with metal cyanides and nitrides.
In 1908 BASF acquired the rights to Fritz Haber's high-pressure synthesis
of ammonia (which yielded a few grams per batch), Bosch was assigned the
task yielding tons per day. This involved designing large-scale pressure
vessels capable o high temperature, finding a less expensive iron alloy
catalyst to replace the osmium that Haber had used, developing a process
for generating volumes of pure hydrogen, and developing methods for separating
and purifying high volumes of toxic gasses. In 1913 the Stickstoffwerke
(Nitrogen works) at Oppau came online, the next year large scale fertilizer
production started. A larger plant was opened near Merseburg in 1917,
adding synthetic methanol and hydrogenated coal oil, the latter because
it was believed there were only a few year's supply of natural petroleum
left underground. Became managing director of BASF in 1919, when inflated
German economy forced BASF, Hoechst, Bayer, and three smaller companies
to merge into I. G. Farbenindustrie AG in 1925 Bosch was named technical
director, in 1935 he became chairman. He was awarded honorary doctorates
from five universities, earned the Liebig, Bunsen, Grashof, Exner, and
Carl Lueg medals, and shared the 1931 Nobel in Chemistry with another
German chemist, Fridrich Bergius. When Hitler's war economy replaced many
workers with concentration camp prisoners in 1939 Bosch had already been
severely ill and out of the company for several years, he succumbed to
his illness on 26 April 1940.
Don't join the book burners. Don't think you are going to conceal faults
by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don't be afraid to go in
your library and read every book.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours,
kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property
of all.
- Voltaire
Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In
the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost.
The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.
- A. Whitney Griswold
When I retire I'm going to spend my evenings by the fireplace going through
those boxes. There are things in there that ought to be burned.
- Richard Milhouse Nixon
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