“Ambitious and Glory Hunting … Impractical and Fantastic”: Heinrich Caro at BASF

Abstract

Research Note “AMBITIOUS AND GLORY HUNTING . . . IMPRACTICAL AND FANTASTIC”: HEINRICH CARO AT BASF ANTHONY S. TRAVIS What makes a successful and prolific inventor? It is a question that many of us ask as we explore the careers of those who have made their names or their fortunes by invention. In the field of technol­ ogy, publications, patents, and memoirs are useful guides to how, why, and when. Sometimes surviving personaljournals, diaries, and correspondence provide meaningful insights into key periods of an inventor’s career. Even self-congratulatory accounts have their place in the repertoire ofhistorical evidence. When source material is thin on the ground, or fragmented, other approaches to verisimilitude must be sought out. Reports of litigation over patents, for example, despite their highly partisan nature, offer ways to measure accom­ plishment. In the case ofthe German chemist Heinrich Caro (18341910 ), arguably the pioneer of modern science-based chemical in­ vention, all these sources are available in abundance, sometimes overwhelmingly so. Nevertheless, it remains difficult to explore his most creative years, the 1870s and early 1880s, at least from Caro’s own perspective. It was a remarkably fertile period, when, as develop­ ment chemist and then research director at the Badische Anilinund Soda-Fabrik (BASF) of Fudwigshafen, Caro became the most important inventor of synthetic dyestuffs in the 19th century.1 Dr. Travis is deputy director of the Sidney M. Edelstein Center for the History and Philosophy of Science, Technology, and Medicine at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He wishes to thank Dr. Lothar Meinzer, BASF Archives, Ludwigshafen, and Dr. Elisabeth Vaupel, Deutsches Museum, Munich, for providing copies of rele­ vant documents, and the referees of Technology and Culture for their critical com­ ments on earlier versions of this article. This research is a contribution toward a study of Heinrich Caro’s industrial career, carried out by Dr. Carsten Reinhardt, University of Regensburg, and the author. 'Dictionary ofScientificBiography, s.v. “Caro, Heinrich”; Ernst Darmstaedter, “Hein­ rich Caro,” in Gunther Bugge, ed., Das Buck dergrosser Chemiher (Berlin, 1929), vol. 2, pp. 298-309.© 1998 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/98/3901-0004$02.00 105 106 Anthony S. Travis What insight there is into Caro’s working style at that time derives almost solely from a retrospective and somewhat one-sided account written by his main professional rival at BASF, Carl Glaser, who joined the firm in 1869.2 Glaser was engaged in the technical devel­ opment of various processes but became somewhat caught up, as did Caro, in the internecine struggles of senior management. His account, apart from its descriptions of processes and products, is a rich and revealing source of information about tensions existing at BASF, capturing, for the period 1869-84, the emotions accompa­ nying the growth of a corporation that almost from the start relied heavily on its inventive prowess. Certainly, and as uncompromisingly exposed by Glaser, it was a time of turbulent relations among the members of the managing board at BASF. Glaser did not hide his contempt for the ways in which the company was run. As for Caro, it was Glaser’s opinion that he lacked thoroughness, order, and selfdiscipline , attributes traditionally associated with the German char­ acter. Caro’s working habits in the laboratory were lax, according to Glaser, and he did not demonstrate the ability to successfully scale up processes. The fact that Caro’s reputation rested on his fame as the leading inventor at BASF serves to increase scrutiny of Glaser’s account. Glaser claimed that Caro’s creativity could be stimulated only by the clever coaxing and manipulation of the head of BASF, Friedrich Engelhorn. This prompts the question ofwhether the near hero-worship of Caro by German as well as British chemists and in­ dustrialists, especially after 1890, made him appear to have possessed more power than he really had. It is not without interest that certain of Caro’s traits as described by Glaser are actually reinforced by Caro’s own accounts, particularly of his education in Berlin and his early industrial career. These are held with the Caro Nachlass—an approximate English equivalent is “estate,” consisting of Caro’s...