Page:Collier's New Encyclopedia v. 01.djvu/142

ALCOHOL one companion, Lieutenant Arthur W. Brown, he left St. Johns, Newfoundland, at 1.43 a. m., June 14, 1919, in a Vickers-Vimy biplane and reached Clifden, Ireland, the following morning, 16 hours and 12 minutes from the time he started. The distance traveled was 1,960 miles. The journey was a terrible one through fog and snow and ice, the latter having at times to be chipped off the machine. For hours they saw neither moon nor stars. Their machine landed in a bog, nose down, but the aviators, though shaken up, were not injured. They received from the London "Daily Mail" the prize of $50,000 that had been offered for the first who should make the flight and later were knighted by the king. Alcock was killed by his airplane crashing to earth while flying over Normandy, France, Dec. 20, 1919.

ALCOHOL, a colorless, inflammable liquid, of agreeable odor, and burning taste, termed also spirit of wine, and ethylic or vinic alcohol.

In organic chemistry, alcohol is the name given to a class of compounds differing from hydrocarbons in the substitution of one or more hydrogen atoms by the monatomic radical hydroxyl (OH)'. Alcohols are divided into monatomic, diatomic, triatomic, etc., according as they contain 1, 2, or 3 atoms of H (hydrogen), each replaced by (OH)'. Alcohols may also be regarded as water in which one atom of H is replaced by a hydrocarbon radical. Alcohol can unite with certain salts, as alcohol of crystallization.

Alcohol is said to be primary, secondary, or tertiary, according as the carbon atom which is in combination with hydroxyl (OH) is likewise directly combined with one, two, or three carbon atoms. The hydrocarbon radicals can also have their carbon atoms linked together in different ways, forming isomeric alcohols. Primary alcohols, by the action of oxidizing agents, yield aldehydes, then acids; secondary alcohols, by oxidation, yield ketones; tertiary alcohols, by oxidation, yield a mixture of acids. Alcohols derived from benzol, or its substitution compounds, are called aromatic alcohols; they contain one or more benzol rings.

In chemistry, pure ethyl alcohol, also called absolute alcohol, is obtained by distilling the strongest rectified spirit of wine with half its weight of quicklime. Alcohol is used as a solvent for alkaloids, resins, essential oils, several salts, etc. Alcohol is obtained by the fermentation of sugars, when a solution of them is mixed with yeast, Mycoderma cervisiæ, and kept at a temperature between 25° and 30°, till it ceases to give off CO2 (carbonic acid gas). It is then distilled. Proof spirit contains 49.5 per cent. of alcohol, and has a specific gravity of 0.9198 at 20° C. Methylated spirit contains 10 per cent. of wood spirit in alcohol of specific gravity 0.830; it is duty free, and can be used instead of spirits of wine for making chloroform, olefiant gas, varnishes, extracting alkaloids, and for preserving anatomical preparations, etc. Wines contain alcohol; port and sherry, 19 to 25 per cent.; claret and hock and strong ale, about 10 per cent.; brandy, whisky, gin, etc., about 40 to 50 per cent.

ALCOHOLISM, a morbid condition resulting from the excessive and persistent use of alcoholic beverages. It has been recognized in recent years as a disease and has been so treated.

ALCOTT, AMOS BRONSON, an American philosophical writer and educator, one of the founders of the transcendental school of philosophy in New England; born at Wolcott, Conn., Nov. 29, 1799. From 1834-1837 his private school in Boston, conducted on the plan of adapting the instruction to the individuality of each pupil, attracted attention. He was on terms of friendship with Emerson, Hawthorne, Channing, Thoreau, Margaret Fuller. After 1840 he lived in Concord, Mass., and was the projector and dean of the Concord School of Philosophy. Lectures on speculative