Past and Future of Chemical Industry

Abstract

IN his medallist's address to the Society of Chemical Industry at Glasgow on July 3, Dr. E. F. Armstrong briefly reviewed developments in chemical industry in the last twenty-five years, with particular reference to his own experiences with Crosfield's and Gossage's. Noting the unprcparcdncss of chemical industry for the Great War, although chemists and chemical industry came well out of that searching ordeal, he urged the importance of maintaining in peace time in active being those industries which in war will furnish the plants, the materials and the chemists necessary for war production. Another war might make even greater demands on our chemical resources, and modern mass-production plants cannot be improvised. Apart from the abiliby of the industry to expand rapidly to supply war needs, the availability of the technical personnel capable of handling intricate manufacturing processes as well as emergency problems is even more important. Dr. Armstrong directed attention to the tendency towards continuous processes, automatically controlled, and viewed with anxiety the future position of important products still made in Great Britain by batch processes. He referred to the systematic work required to secure the best results when a particular aggregation of plant has to be adapted to making several substances in turn, as in the colour industry, and briefly discussed the rationalisation of chemical industry as well as the formation and work of the Association of British Chemical Manufacturers and the effect of tariff changes on chemical industry.