American Chemical Industry
American Chemical Industry
复制标题
美国化学工业
作者：
A. Beutel
THE American Chemical Society is holding in conjunction with its annual meeting in New York on April 22, what may prove to be the largest scientific assembly in history. The object is to expound and commemorate the development of the American chemical industry since its foundation three hundred years ago by John Winthrop Jr., son of the pilgrim Governor of the Massachusetts Colony. In 1633 he set up in Boston the first chemical laboratory and library in the United States, for which he imported apparatus, chemicals and chemical books, and two years later when he became the first colonial Governor of Connecticut, he mapped out a far-reaching programme of local industries including the production of salt, iron, potash, tar, black lead, saltpetre, medicines, copper, alum and other chemicals. Some of these chemicals were made for local use; the chemicals of the forest were exported. It was at Winthrop's suggestion that Massachusetts passed a law in 1642 requiring every town to collect manures to make saltpetre. Chemical industry in the modern sense did not begin in the United States until 150 years later, when in 1792 the manufacture of sulphuric acid was commenced in Philadelphia by John Harrison.
