Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 64.djvu/540

536 methods exist, as is frequently the case with new products, it is the task of the analytical laboratory to devise such methods, and the work demanded of our analysts is just as important and difficult as the task of any other chemist in our employ. Our analytical chemists must have the same scientific education as the others, and we consider them in position and rank on a par with any other chemist.

The manufacturing is of course in the hands of first-class chemists. The factory is divided into different departments. At the head of each department one of the most experienced chemists is placed as department chief, and he manages his section as a factory in itself. Thus our works are divided into the inorganic department, the departments for intermediary organic products, for aniline colors, for alizarine colors and the pharmaceutical department.

Each of these departments consists of a number of separate divisions which are again under the management of chemists, all of whom we have trained ourselves. The chemists of the different divisions belonging to one department have a joint laboratory whence they conduct the various manufactures, their main object being economical production and good yields. Each step of the reaction is continually watched analytically, and thousands upon thousands of experiments are constantly carried out to improve the processes and above all the quality of the manufactured products. These chemists have also charge of the machinery used in their departments, and a scientific engineer acts in conjunction with them.

Commercially educated employees control the consumption of chemicals of all kinds in each department, and based on their figures, and the figures of the consumption of water, gas, steam, ice, compressed and rarified air, etc., used in the processes, exact calculations are made for each product monthly. Furthermore, there are scientific laboratories, one for inorganic chemistry, another for coal-tar colors of the benzine and naphthaline series, a third for those of the alizarine and anthraquinone groups, another for pharmaceutical and photographic products. In these laboratories all reactions which seem to be of technical importance and which have been described in scientific and technical journals are tested as to the value. All the patents, issued in the various countries, are studied and their processes executed on a small scale. The new products which appear in the market are analyzed and investigated in order to determine their constitution and their practical value and to ascertain whether they can be utilized in the manufacture of any new products. It is further the duty of the heads of these scientific laboratories to inform not only the chemists who are working under them, but also the other works chemists, of everything new in chemistry, scientific as well as technical, and regular