Report on an Overseas Business Trip

from 1. IX. 09 to 1. IX. 11.

N. N. Vorozhtsov.

Objectives of the trip: Vienna. Work with Prof. Friedländer. Organization of the school at the Technologisches Gewerbe Museum.—The Mülhausen chemical school, its significance for Russia. Organization of instruction. Attitude of the local society toward the school. Excursions.—Dresden. Work in the laboratory of Prof. Möhlau.—Teaching, examinations at the Polytechnic. Scientific colloquia of the students.—Russian factories visited by me in 1909. Their technical features. Utilization of exhaust steam in production.—Foreign factories. Their differences from Russian ones. Hand printing.—Photogravure.—List of the author’s published works.

In the autumn of 1909 I was sent by the Ministry of Public Education for two years abroad to prepare myself for teaching a course in dyeing technology. Even when the Council of the Tomsk Technological Institute petitioned for my assignment, and while I was considering how to carry it out most productively, I arrived quite naturally at the conclusion that, in addition to supplementing purely theoretical chemical knowledge by attending lectures at foreign educational institutions and working under their direction in laboratories suitably equipped for that purpose, it was highly desirable and, for a technologist, exceptionally useful to become acquainted with the practice of foreign industry in the field that interested me. In order, moreover, to have my own Russian scale for comparison, it seemed necessary to refresh my observations of Russian textile-chemical technique by inspecting mills and factories. To this end, in the summer of 1909, during the trip through Russia permitted to me by the Trustee of the West Siberian Educational District, I visited several industrial establishments in the Moscow and Ivanovo-Voznesensk regions. My summer observations are described in the second half of the present report; here it is necessary only to note, as a general feature of the Russian factories visited, the cordial hospitality I encountered on the part of their representatives, their complete accessibility, and their courteous readiness to show and explain everything of interest.

I began my actual work abroad in Vienna, in the seminar on tinctorial chemistry of Professor Friedländer*) at the Technological-Industrial Museum (K. K. Technologisches Gewerbe—Museum).

The choice of Prof. Friedländer as the first supervisor of my scientific studies abroad was highly successful; his laboratory, however, proved quite unusual in the poverty of its equipment, its extremely poor adaptation to the methods of modern chemical research, and the complete absence of the necessary apparatus and arrangements.

Suffice it to say that, for the six graduate chemists working in our room, there was one water tap for a pump, one for a condenser, and one at the sink for filling water baths, washing, and so forth. There was one fume cupboard, one and a half arshins long, and even that did not work; in general, on first acquaintance the laboratory appeared to have gone for a very long time without repair. Such a deplorable condition of the chemical laboratory of the Technological Museum is explained, first of all, by the small budget, as in most Austrian educational institutions [despite, in this particular case, the very high fee for the right to work: 40 crowns (16 rubles) per month from Austrian subjects, 60 crowns (24 rubles) from foreigners for one workplace, while, of course, all materials and some of the apparatus are purchased by the workers themselves], and secondly, apparently, by the abnormal position of the laboratory within the Museum.

The “Technological-Industrial Museum” was founded by the union of industrialists of Lower Austria more than 30 years ago. The task of the Museum was to create a central place where the small industrialist could see good examples of the products of his craft and obtain from there submasters sufficiently prepared for activity. Accordingly, the institution described was, first, a museum of samples, and secondly, a federation of a whole series of craft and secondary technical schools, to which there was also attached a chemical school, whose direct task was to train young people, skilled in certain technical analyses, for the needs of various branches of the chemical industry. In the school there were taught) elementary courses in chemistry and chemical technology, and optional practical classes were opened) in certain departments of techno-chemical analysis. Prof. Friedländer began 15 years ago—

*) Paul Friedländer.

**) I speak in the past tense, since at present the chemical school has been separated from the Museum and has received an independent premises and a different organization.

to be appointed dean of the chemical section of this peculiar school federation. Being already at that time a professor at the Polytechnic in Karlsruhe, with a notable scholarly name, he naturally did not wish to confine himself to teaching elementary chemistry and the rudiments of dyeing to poorly prepared young people; and at his laboratory there was created a seminar in which chemists who had completed a course at a higher school could work scientifically. Despite the poor equipment of the laboratory, understandable in view of the absence of an organic connection between the laboratories, the place of which, under the higher educational institution, was taken by a crafts “museum,” and despite the high fee, there were always enough workers. Their chief contingent consisted of young people who had finished a university or a polytechnic and were preparing, under Friedländer’s guidance, their doctoral dissertations. As a guide on the difficult path of independent chemical research, Friedländer enjoys a fully deserved honorable reputation.

From this laboratory of his, whose pitiable appearance might terrify anyone acquainted with the requirements of chemical work, there has emerged a whole series of remarkable investigations on the synthesis of organic substances*), as though in illustration of V. Meyer’s words: “the best work has been done in the very worst laboratories.” To this laboratory there unmistakably came a letter with an English postage stamp which the author of the present report happened to see in Prof. Friedländer’s office; touching in its inaccuracy, its address was:

speaking of the glorious name that the organizer of a modest seminar had won among the chemists of the world**).

I, unfortunately, did not have occasion to hear Prof. Friedländer’s lectures, since, in view of the forthcoming transfer of the chemical school to other premises, part of the courses had been discontinued. The work in his laboratory, however, was of great interest to me. The professor’s erudition in all branches of chemistry is combined with enormous experimental experience. It was positively pleasant to observe him when someone turned to him concerning a difficulty

*) Thioindigo red and its derivatives; the synthesis and determination of the structure of the purple of the ancients, such as 6,6-dibromoindigo and a number of others.

**) At the present time Prof. Friedländer is already a professor at the Polytechnic in Darmstadt.

…that arose in the course of the work: having analyzed the essence of the phenomenon of interest from the theoretical side, Friedländer quickly found the necessary conclusion and immediately confirmed his conclusion by carrying out the required experiment on a small scale. Incidentally, in experimentation he almost never uses any vessels other than test tubes, even for such operations as steam distillation, extraction, etc. This imparts a peculiar elegance to his methods. To be present at his explanations and to follow the experiments is an excellent school in the methodology of chemical research.—

By agreement with Friedländer I began work on the question of the influence of methylation on the fastness to light of oxyazo dyes. It was undertaken on the a priori assumption that in the products of methylation the fastness to light would be increased; but the results of the work *) contradicted expectations, since the degree of resistance of the methylated dyes was either approximately the same as, or lower than, that of the corresponding unmethylated ones. In the course of this work, as yet undescribed derivatives of $\alpha$-methoxynaphthalene were also obtained and studied.

Having finished the treatment of this question within two months, I decided to take up another piece of work in the field of indigoid dyes, an area especially characteristic in recent times of Friedländer’s school. Of the seven people working at the same time as I was (as many as the size of the premises allowed), six were engaged in the synthesis of dyes of this group, and only one (a doctor of medicine) was conducting another investigation (the hydrolysis of protein substances). The kinship of the problems and the commonality of the main idea increase the interest of each individual’s research, while at the same time making it possible for the others to follow his work as well. I received Friedländer’s proposal to study the synthesis of a naphthalene derivative of thioindigo red, namely 2,1-naphthalenethioindigo, starting from naphthylaminesulfocleic acid 1,2. Since this work has not yet been published **), I shall allow myself to dwell on it in somewhat more detail.

Strictly speaking, the starting material was not naphthylaminesulfonic acid 1,2 itself, but its 1,4 derivative (naphthionic acid), from which the former was obtained by the patented (By) method, namely by heating sodium naphthionate in boiling naphthalene. The course of the transformations traced in this work is expressed by the following scheme:

) See below the list of published works.
*) It has been given to Prof. Friedländer for publication in connection with other works of his school dealing with syntheses of analogues of this dye.

In this connection, 1,2-nitrilosulfobenzoic acid (III) was obtained from II as a product of the Sandmeyer reaction, and itself passes into the corresponding sulfochloride (IV) on treatment of the salt with phosphorus pentachloride.

Fig. 1.

This sulfochloride, when treated with zinc and acetic acid, gives nitrilthionaphthol (V), which is capable, in an alkaline medium, of condensing with chloroacetic acid to the cyanide derivative of β-naphthylthioglycolic acid (VI). Thionaphthol, as well as the substituted thioglycolic acid, were not isolated in pure form, but were converted directly by boiling with alkali in the presence of chloroacetic acid into orthocarboxy-β-naphthylthioglycolic acid (VII), whereby, consequently, saponification of the nitrile also occurred. The preparation of this dibasic acid is a rather delicate operation, since, on the one hand, its nitrile group is not saponified so easily—it requires more than an hour’s boiling with aqueous alkali of moderate strength—and an inhomogeneous product is often obtained, apparently containing the corresponding nitrile amide of the acid; on the other hand, under these conditions cyclic condensation already takes place to the corresponding thioindoxylic acid (VIII). This condensation proceeds best on brief heating of acid (VII) with strong caustic soda. After acidification of the reaction product, evaporated almost to dryness, on boiling the resulting acidic liquid, naphthalinothioindoxyl (IX) distils over with steam. If thioindoxyl (IX) [or simply acid (VIII)] is dissolved in strong caustic soda [in the latter case the solution must be heated] and a solution of red prussiate of potash is added to the solution, precipitation of naphthalinothioindigo in the form of red flakes is observed. This dye crystallizes from nitrobenzene in the form of very beautiful long dark-red needles. It can have no practical significance,

since the shades obtained on the fabric fade (with hydrosulfite) and are insufficiently bright and beautiful.

This same dye was obtained by condensing β-naphthylthioglycolic acid

\[ \begin{array}{c} \text{[naphthalene ring]}-\mathrm{SCH_2COO_n} \end{array} \]

with the aid of chlorosulfonic acid into thioindoxyl, and by oxidizing the latter in an alkaline medium with potassium ferricyanide. In order to avoid sulfonation of the thioindoxyl, it was necessary to work not with pure chlorosulfonic acid, but with its solution in dichloroethylene.

Toward the end of my stay in Vienna (late March 1910), after consulting with Friedländer, I decided to spend the coming summer semester working at the chemical school in Mulhouse (Alsace). Friedländer, who was on friendly terms with the director of the school, Prof. Nölting, kindly offered to write to him about me.

The Mulhouse Chemical School (Städtische Chemie-Schule zu Mülhausen i/E), which has existed as an independent educational institution since 1871 and attained its present flourishing condition under Director Nölting (since 1880), deserves the attention of the Russian investigator of specialized education for the reason alone that it is a serious competitor to specialized educational institutions in Russia, supplying Russian textile factories with a considerable number of higher technical employees—chemists, colorists, etc. There are a number of large factories (Messrs. Em. Zindel and others) which are so firmly filled with “Alsatians”) who so zealously guard “the purity of the factory from natives” that it is almost impossible for a Russian chemist or technician to gain entry to them, despite a diploma and often even the consent of the factory owners. Recently it has been observed that at some textile-chemical factories the entire senior staff is being replaced—either Russians are replacing Alsatians, or Russians are replacing the latter. It must be said that the chemical school in Mulhouse has long attracted young natives of Russia seeking specialized coloristic training. Looking through the tables of the school’s students over a series of years*), we see that Russian subjects constantly predominate among the other foreigners in the school, making up on average more than 50% of the number

*) i.e., former pupils of the Mulhouse school.

) Geschichte der städtischen höheren Chemie-Schule in Mülhausen i/E. Zusammengestellt zur Feier des 25-jährigen Amtsjubiläums des Direktors Dr. Emilio Noelting. Strassburg. 1905, pp. 28–30.

students who were natives of Alsace and Lorraine. In general, the ratio of the number of foreigners (including also non-Alsatian Germans) to the number of all students of the school during 1879–1905 was approximately 75%. And this despite the extraordinarily high tuition fee for foreigners, amounting to 1,000 marks per year (or 125 marks per month), increased by laboratory expenses by another 200–300 marks. Obviously, the fame of Mulhouse and its attractive force are very great. In view of what has been said, it was especially interesting to study the organization of the work of this laboratory, which produces competitors to domestic workers in technical chemistry.

From the admission rules and the teaching program sent to me, it is evident that young people who have a certificate of maturity from German gymnasiums or Realschulen are admitted to the school without examination. The course of instruction is designed for three years. The subjects of instruction are:

1. Inorganic chemistry (1 year, 6 weekly hours.)

2. Analytical chemistry (including special technical analysis)—1 year, 4 weekly hours.

3. Organic chemistry—1 year, 4 weekly hours.

4. Physics—1½ years, 4 weekly hours.

5. Applied mechanics—1 year, 4 weekly hours.

6. Introduction to higher mathematics—1 year, 2 weekly hours.

7. Crystallography and mineralogy—1 year, 2 weekly hours.

8. Physical chemistry—1 year, 2 weekly hours.

9. Special organic chemistry and the chemical technology of fibrous and dyeing substances—1 year, 8 weekly hours.

10. Factory legislation.

To this must be added the hours of practical work in the laboratories: in winter 32 and 34 hours, in summer 41 and 43 hours per week.

Wishing to study the most characteristic feature of the school, I decided to acquaint myself with the organization of the teaching of the practice of calico printing and dyeing and for some time worked in the school’s calico-printing laboratory (Drucksaal). Here I had the opportunity to meet the well-known figure in coloristic literature, Mr. Henri Schmid, a full member of the Mulhouse Technical Society (Société de Mulhouse). Mr. Schmid is an old worker in coloristics; he was once a colorist in Russia and maintains ties with it even now, being a consultant to certain factories. He uses the school laboratory for his investigations, in return undertaking the duties of instructor in the practice of calico printing. His knowledge in this field is very

great; it seems to me that the school would benefit if he were entrusted with delivering a course on the methods of calico printing and the various combinations that may arise in the practice of this work. Such a course is not read at all; its subject matter is included as part of the course read by Prof. Nölting (of which below), but, for the benefit of the work, it would be possible to set out this information separately.

In view of the great interest and the divergent opinions recently aroused by the newly appeared practice of saltpeter discharge printing on indigo blue (Freiberger’s patent), by agreement with Mr. Schmid I took it up with the aim of clarifying the significance of the individual ingredients of the printing ink. My experiments established certain peculiarities of the action of the discharge (see the list of published works). A more systematic investigation is required in order to clarify the action of the discharge upon the strength of the fabric, which at present remains a disputed question.

The rest of the time I worked in the dye-chemistry laboratory (under the direction of Prof. Nölting), studying the question of azine dyestuffs obtained by the condensation of phenanthrenequinone and its substituted derivatives with F diamino acid (1,2-diamine—5-naphthol—7-sulfonic acid:

\[ \begin{array}{c} \mathrm{NH_2}\\[-0.3em] \begin{array}{ccc} \mathrm{HO_3S} & \quad \chemfig{*6(-=(-*6(-=(-NH_2)-=(-OH)-=))-=-=)} \quad & \end{array} \end{array} \]

). Azines from this acid, on the one hand, and phenanthrenequinone, 2-nitrophenanthrenequinone, and 4-nitrophenanthrenequinone, on the other, differ little from one another as dyes, giving silk approximately the same yellow coloration. In combination of the azines with diazo compounds, dyestuffs of deeper shades (red in color) are obtained; moreover, these azo products simultaneously possess the properties both of azines and of a direct azo dye, since they dye all three kinds of fiber. The work is not yet fully completed and has not been published.

Among the subjects taught in the chemical school, the course in “dye chemistry,” read by Prof. Nölting (8 hours a week), undoubtedly stands out by virtue of the interest it arouses in the students.

This extensive course has as its subject both the description of fibrous substances, the methods of their isolation, treatment, and ennobling, the methods of dyeing and calico printing, and the chemistry of coal-tar, intermediates of dye manufacture, and the dyestuffs themselves. A most interesting feature of the lectures is, above all, the plan of their concentric exposition, which enables the lecturer to return up to three times to the material being presented.

question, continually expanding its scope and linking it ever more firmly with other questions; as a second feature of the course one should note the rather restrained, if one may so express it, “tinctorial-chemical point of view” on all of organic chemistry, pursued by Nölting. In treating, during the course, all classes of organic compounds, the lecturer, alongside the generally recognized chromophores and auxochromes, emphasizes those groupings whose accumulation determines the transformation of colorless compounds into colored ones, and of these latter into dyestuffs; he puts before the audience a mass of still untouched, outlined or unresolved questions of this kind. These circumstances, together with Nölting’s ability to present the very latest news of his specialty (not always even verified, by virtue of their freshness, but always interesting), make his lectures the best attended in the school. The publication in print of this course of his would be very desirable.

Instructor Remy gives a course in technical physics and mechanics, including approximately what in Russian educational institutions is called applied mechanics. One chapter of this course is especially developed—it treats of machines of the textile-chemical specialty. Being, as a former representative of a machine-building factory and as a manufacturer at present, thoroughly familiar with the subject, Remy communicates in his lectures much interesting material, especially from the area of the basic requirements that must be imposed on particular machines, and of criticism of the relative merits of various systems.

Turning to the question of the extent to which the fame of the Mulhouse school, as an outstanding one in its specialty, is deserved, one must answer in the affirmative, but with certain reservations. An important merit of the school is its extraordinary closeness to practical life. In the school there are no figures devoted solely to pure science. The director and professor Nölting has up to the present been a consultant to many dyeing and calico-printing factories; thanks to his uninterrupted ties with practice, he keeps abreast of all the latest developments of the specialty, having to his credit, in the past, a number of inventions of valuable dyestuffs, such as erythrosine, phloxine, and other dyes of the phthalein group, Saint-Denis dye, fast-chrome yellow, and others. Prof. Remy is the owner of a large bleaching and printing factory there in Mulhouse; he willingly shows it to the students of the school once a year. Prof. Kermann*) (organic chemistry)

*) Now a professor at the University of Lausanne.

to serve six years at the Cassella dye factory. Prof. Wolf Müller (physics and physical chemistry) has recently exchanged his teaching activity for factory work, having entered the dye factory at Höchst, perhaps in order, after working there, to return again to the ranks of the professoriate.

Mr. Schmid, as has already been mentioned, is a former colorist and now works for a factory. There is not a single assistant in the school who has not spent time in factory service or is not intending to get there. Such an exchange of intellectual forces between factory and school naturally leads to imparting to the school a great deal of practicalism. The requirements made of the pupils are not burdensome in the diversity of the disciplines with which they must be acquainted; but what is considered important for practice (technical analysis, organic synthetic chemistry, etc.) the pupil must know thoroughly. With a three-year course, a graduate of the Mulhouse school, in the scope of his knowledge, of course falls short of graduates of higher German technical educational institutions—not to mention Russian ones, with our multiplicity of subjects—but in his level of competence in certain disciplines recognized as necessary in the school, he somewhat surpasses both the former and the latter. What is of greater importance is not the school preparation of the pupils, but the constant possibility, for those who have already completed the course, of finding in their alma mater the resolution of their perplexities, since the school laboratory is that very experimental factory which knows much of what is taking place in living technology and which does not make a secret of it from the pupils. In this continuous interaction of life with the school, and in its patron—the Industrial Society (Société Industrielle) connected with it—there lies, in my view, one of the reasons for the school’s success.

A fortunate circumstance for the school is Mulhouse’s position in the center of a large factory district. In this respect, first, some of the pupils are already somewhat acquainted with factory activity on entering the school, having grown up in the families of factory owners or employees; secondly, it is always possible for the school to arrange excursions to visit factories in the comparatively nearby surroundings. In the summer semester of 1910 alone there were more than ten such excursions. It is also necessary to note another important condition that strongly contributes to the growth and prosperity of the school—this is the attentive and, one might say, affectionate attitude toward it on the part of local society. The school is the pride of Mulhouse, and the city community, represented by the Council (Stadtrat), gives a subsidy for its maintenance; the Industrial Society also goes...

schools financially, and by opening the doors of their factories for school excursions, despite the presence—hardly desirable for them—of foreigners among the excursionists, the local manufacturers are helping this school in one of its tasks: to acquaint students with the practical setting of the work. I shall note, incidentally, that one must be prepared for the Mulhouse school possibly someday being closed to foreigners altogether; even now the high cost of instruction deters many compatriots who would like to enter it. In the local press voices are constantly heard in favor of refusing forever to “warm these vipers on one’s breast” *). Having been educated here and having ferreted out our secrets, they—i.e., the foreign pupils—go home and there create competition for our factories, driving out Alsatian chemists from native factories. True, persons who look at the matter more practically reason otherwise: after all, the school lives by foreigners, and its budget depends to a considerable extent on the number of foreign students (Alsatians pay half and may be exempted from payment). Having lost the foreigners, the school would have to obtain an equivalent number of local pupils—“if only more of them would go to school,” say these “well-wishers” of foreigners... In any case, the position of a foreigner in the school is rather difficult: the Alsatian students keep together and are unanimously disposed against their future competitors, despite the fact that the majority of their teachers are not natives of the locality: Nelting is an American citizen, Schmidt a Swiss, Kerman a pure-blooded German. It seems to me that it would be timely to think of establishing in Russia a special educational institution similar to this School. In this respect Ivanovo-Voznesensk, with its school of colorists, might, it would seem, be a serious competitor of Mulhouse: the city’s central location in a manufacturing district is very favorable for such a task. Perhaps the entrance requirements for the school should be raised somewhat (at least to the scope of the course of a six-grade real school), and the curricula of the school’s special subjects should be broadened and deepened; then, provided there were a sufficiently knowledgeable teaching staff and the manufacturers maintained an invariably benevolent attitude, this school would begin to attract more students, especially if it were made possible (by some change in the curriculum) to pass from the school to the chemical department

) A literal expression from the local newspaper Express* in one of the July issues of 1910.

higher educational institutions. Graduation from the Mulhausen School (provided one has a certificate of maturity) makes it possible, upon completing the corresponding work, to obtain the degree of doctor at one of the Swiss or French universities—this is also one of the attractions of the Mulhausen School.

The technical equipment of this latter cannot be regarded as fully meeting its aims. The laboratories of analytical and organic chemistry, it is true, leave nothing to be desired in respect of convenience and modernity of equipment; perhaps only more space would not have been amiss. But the calico-printing laboratory is small, cramped, and no longer so rich in apparatus. There are three hand-printing machines there (one is occupied by G. Schmid); there is a large assortment of dyestuffs and materials needed for the work; there is an excellent steam boiler of the Schmid-Koller system, a drying cabinet for printed dyed goods, and a cabinet for maturing black aniline; but there are absolutely no devices suitable for experiments in finishing already prepared goods—this important branch of the textile industry cannot be studied at all in the Mulhausen School. As far as one may judge from advertising descriptions, in the analogous school in Krefeld attention has also been paid to this detail. In the Mulhausen laboratory, moreover, there are no large dyeing baths at all with mechanical drive, and when there is need of even somewhat sizable samples of dyed fabric, the dyeing has to be carried out in porcelain cups placed on a water bath, simply dipping the fabric into them by hand. Were this not a special school, one might not, of course, make such demands of it; but in Mulhausen, it would seem, one might expect to find something more adapted to the needs of the matter than ordinary water baths with porcelain beakers 6 cm in diameter. The students also complain of the excessively high prices for all materials purchased at the school, and of the strict rejection of the laboratory equipment accepted from them—circumstances that appreciably increase the cost of instruction.

A list of the factories I visited in this district, and a description of their special features, are given below.

Having thus visited two specialized schools (in Vienna and Mulhausen), I subsequently decided to work in the laboratory of some polytechnic institute. Interested in the question of the combinations of azo dyes with bisulfites of the alkali metals, I marked out three laboratories that seemed most suitable to me, where ...

one could have engaged in this: Willstätter in Zurich, Melau-Bucherer in Dresden, and Schwalbe in Darmstadt. Having received from the first a refusal to accept me for lack of space, and consent from Prof. Melau, I settled on Dresden.

In the course of the work I undertook there, I was able to establish that, in the reaction with bisulfite, the azo group of a free dye plays no role; that oxyazo- and amido-azo compounds enter into this reaction, as do the corresponding phenols and amines without an azo-alphin group. Further observations will have to extend the range of observations to a series of analogues (see the list of published works).

Prof. Melau is in charge, at the Dresden Polytechnic, of the laboratory of dye chemistry and dyeing technique. The work of the practical students consisted in the preparation of a fairly large number of preparations (30–40) of organic dyes with reference to technical methods, their testing, and the dyeing of fibrous substances with the dyes obtained. The preparative practical course, which, according to the book by Melau and Bucherer, Farbenchemisches Praktikum, has been set apart as an independent course in all the higher technical schools of Germany—in Dresden alone (in Mülhausen the number of dye preparations is no smaller)—and is compulsory for all students of chemistry, pushes actual dyeing practice into second place. The entire semester is occupied, for the student, with the synthesis of dyes; at the end of it the student devotes a day or two to dyeing woolen and cotton yarn with his dyes. This dyeing is carried out hastily, at once in ten beakers, and, of course, in doing so he has no time to concern himself with questions such as why for some coloring substances it is recommended to take wool fiber and for others cotton, what the mordanting operation consists in, etc. In general, both the teaching and the exercises in this laboratory are, unnecessarily, theoretical and of little practical character. In his lectures*) Prof. Melau adheres to the existing textbooks both in the system and in the scope of the course. It is possible that the illness which recently compelled the professor to give up teaching entirely prevented him from making his instruction interesting.

The laboratory is very well equipped. There is sufficient room for work; everything necessary is present; even signs of luxury are observed, in the form of a steam line to each workplace. There are also many apparatuses for mechanical work in the field of coloristics: a printing

*) I had occasion to attend lectures on the chemistry of coal-tar (primary distillation and semi-products) and on the technology of fibrous substances.

machine, behind a steam boiler, but their constantly hidden appearance gives the impression that they are never worked on.

Most of the independent works (doctoral and diploma) carried out under the direction of Prof. Meldau bear the stamp of excessive contrivance and of little practical significance. They are either the elaboration of old patents already abandoned by factories as unsuitable, or purely preparative exercises, amounting to the repetition ten times over of one and the same reaction—exercises which do not teach their performer the methods of organic synthesis.

When one becomes acquainted with the organization of instruction in the chemical department of the Polytechnic, what is striking is the small encumbrance of the students with the number of subjects to be taken, which allows them to devote themselves more thoroughly to the area of chemistry that interests them. To obtain the diploma of engineer, the student is examined twice. At the intermediate examination (Vorprüfung) he is required to pass: inorganic and organic chemistry, physics, the theory of machines (a short course in applied mechanics), botany (or mineralogy); at the diploma examination: physical chemistry with electrochemistry, synthetic methods of organic chemistry, the technology of organic and nutritive substances, the technology of mineral acids, salts, building materials, metallurgy, and the chemical technology of dyes and dyeing. That is all. The very conduct of the examination is not tiring either for the examinee or for the examiner: the examination in all subjects is held in a single day, with no fewer than 3 and no more than 5 persons in the group. Only an hour of time is allotted for conversation with each examiner (there are 4 in all); thus the testing of each individual student in each subject lasts no longer than 20 minutes. With the ability to pose questions on the part of such experienced pedagogues as Professors Hempel, E. F. Meyer, Förster, this time is quite sufficient to determine how well the given person is prepared. From the list of subjects it is evident that the training of German graduated engineers (in the chemical department) does not correspond to that of Russian chemical engineers, since the basic mechanical-technical disciplines are taught there in a very abbreviated form in the course Maschinenlehre.

A very attractive institution of German higher educational establishments is the so-called scientific colloquia, of which there are two in the chemical department of the Dresden Polytechnic: in organic chemistry (directors Prof. v. Meyer, Möhlau, v. Walter), and in physical chemistry (Prof. Förster, Luther, Lottermoser). This

weekly meetings of the students and instructors of the given specialty, held in order to hear a report by an instructor or a student on some question. The meetings are public for the personnel of the school. Topics for student reports are chosen, for the most part, at the suggestion of, or in agreement with, the instructor. The reports either concern questions that have arisen during laboratory work, or review newly published journal articles and books, or undertake a summary of various opinions on an interesting question of chemistry or technical practice. After the report, a discussion is opened on it, chaired by one of the professors. The establishment of such colloquia at domestic higher schools would be welcome: they encourage and interest the student in scientific work, accustom him to understand and use literary material, give people who have devoted themselves to work in one field the opportunity to keep abreast of news in various branches of science, and thereby weaken the harmful influence of specialization.

The end of my stay abroad I devoted to studies in preparation for the examination for the right to occupy a chair, occasionally absenting myself in order to inspect certain factories. The trip to Prague planned at the beginning, for work on the spectral analysis of dyes in the laboratory of Prof. Formánek, could not take place owing to this scholar’s complete lack of time.

Before my departure from Russia I visited the following factories and plants:

The manufactory of Ludwig Rabenek in Shchelkovo near Moscow, with its own sulfuric acid plant (by the contact process).

The wool-spinning and dyeing factory of the Association of A. Bakhrushin’s Sons in Moscow.

The Sokolov Manufactory of the Association of Asaf Baranov at Strunino station of the Moscow–Yaroslavl Railway, with its own gas plant (from fuel oil).

The calico-printing and cotton-spinning factory of the Association of the heirs of V. E. and A. Yasyuninsky in the village of Kokhma.

The Kuvaevo Manufactory in Ivanovo-Voznesensk.

The Pokrov Manufactory of P. N. Gryaznov in Ivanovo-Voznesensk.

The calico-printing factory of the Association of the heirs of I. V. Neburchinov and Sons in the town of Shuya.

The Rubachevs’ piece-dyeing and printing (wadding goods) factory in Shuya.

The Brashnin silk factory (weaving, dyeing) in Dubrovka, Vladimir Province.

The factory of dyeing and tanning extracts of Ya. Stolyarov in Moscow.

The city gas plant in Moscow.

Handicraft sheepskin plants in the village of Pustosha, Shuya District.

The leather and wool-washing plant of the A. Bakhrushin Sons Partnership in Moscow.

The leather plant and shoe factory of Karl Thiel in Moscow.

At the calico-printing factories I found hydrosulfite bleaching becoming widespread. Most factories that work piece goods (on continuous apparatuses) prepare hydrosulfite in solution themselves; others work with purchased material. There are factories that have even emancipated themselves from suppliers of solid hydrosulfite compounds (Rongalite, etc.) and prepare them themselves. Hydrosulfite discharge on indigo is entirely displacing chrome oxidative discharge, just as hydrosulfite discharge on naphthol dyes has taken the place of the old working methods, such as printing with naphthol ground or reserve under naphthol (Rolfes, etc.) followed by development on diazo. All the advantages—cleanliness of the ground, sharpness of outlines—are, of course, on the side of the new method. Dyeing with sulfur dyes, discharged by Reserve Age, is making great progress. For the maturing of black aniline there is in practice no fully generally accepted apparatus. Alongside the Preibisch maturing chamber, the Gutfeld chamber is also in use*), and many practitioners debate the merits of one or another system. The black goods produced**) are everywhere preliminarily mercerized. Mercerization is not infrequently applied also to other grades of indigo, diazoline grounds, etc.

Mercerization systems, despite differences among the machine-manufacturing firms (Weisbach, Humbold, Gruschwitz), differ little in principle and consist, in their main features, of a bath (padding) with a solution of cold alkali; after leaving it the goods pass under some pressure (several tens of kg/cm²) between two iron rollers and enter a tenter frame of one construction or another, where they are washed. In most cases white goods are mercerized (cf. observations abroad). In one case I had occasion to see a very original Brandenberger mercerization system (Béha).

*) Failing them, also small Mather-Platt steaming chambers.

**) Sateen, demicoton, etc.

There is no shirting frame here. After padding A, the goods pass through a system of three large cast-iron drums, up to 1 meter

Fig. 2.

in diameter, drums BB, movable in bearings in the vertical direction. These drums touch, along their generatrix, the cast-iron rollers CC and, by their weight, strongly press the goods, not allowing them to settle. In this case the goods are mercerized in the gray state, and after vigorous washing in the continuous apparatus, wound on a roll, go into Feckson’s vat for boiling in the kier. Four hours of boiling with alkali, with continuous rolling of the goods from one roller to another, are recognized as sufficient. All further operations with the goods treated in this way are also performed in the stretched state. Goods that especially fear distortion of the weft when working with a rope go to this mercerizing and bleaching.

The machinery section, in general, is being continuously improved. At many factories they are changing over to electric transmission of power. As an outstanding example I must note the machine station at the Pokrovskaya Manufactory of P. N. Gryaznov. Built a year before my visit, it is a step forward in the struggle of steam engines against gas engines in industries (as are the majority of chemical ones) where a large quantity of low-pressure steam is required for heating purposes. Two piston engines of 850 h.p. each, supplied by Ascherslebener Maschinenbau-Actien-Gesellschaft vorm. W. Schmidt & Co. (Aschersleben), operate at a pressure of 10 atm. and a back pressure of 2 atm. The exhaust steam at two atmospheres pressure, by means of a reducing valve automatically opening into a steam pipeline up to 120 meters long to the factory, exits; moreover, despite this length of pipe, the heat loss toward the end, thanks to excellent insulation, does not exceed 10°. In the room beneath the engines there is a chamber for separating oil from the steam and a valve communicating with the pa—

the steam pipeline from the boilers and opens into the factory steam line as soon as the pressure in the latter falls below the standard (i.e., when steam consumption at the factory is increased). In the event of increased pressure in the steam line (low steam consumption at the factory), the corresponding valve opens, and the excess steam is used to heat the feed water for the boilers; this same need is also served by the surplus steam from the boilers. Since the draft in the boiler flues is induced by a fan, there is no need to discharge flue gases at a high temperature; they first pass through the economizer, give up their heat to the water which has entered it after purification, and leave already at a temperature of 95°–110°. The consumption of the thermal energy of steam, according to the engineer-mechanic G. Tairov, who kindly showed me the station, reaches 730 t. units per one indicated horsepower, whereas in Diesel engines 1500 t. units are consumed for the same energy. At other factories, on the contrary, installations of large Diesel engines (300–600 h.p.) are considered advantageous as sources of energy, together with low-pressure steam boilers for heating purposes, whereby high-pressure boilers are consequently eliminated.

In the environs of Mulhouse I visited the following manufacturing factories:

Met Rouge in Dornach,
Schäffer & Cº in Dornach,
Heilmann & Cº in Mulhouse,
Sheurer & Laut in Thann,
Köchlin & Baumgarten in Lörrach,
Gross, Roman & Cº in Wesserling,
the Keller-Dorian mechanical factory in Mulhouse (with a copperplate engraving shop for the manufacturing district).

The scale of production is smaller than at the majority of Russian factories I have seen. All these are old establishments, often with a historical name in industry (Sheurer, Köchlin). Unlike Russian factories, the greater part of them process not one but three kinds of fibrous materials: silk, woolen, and cotton fabrics and yarn. This circumstance naturally increases the number and diversity of the machines used. Many operations, depending on the properties of the goods being processed and on the requirements of the local market (especially in finishing), differ from similar ones ...

Russian ones. Here many very delicate thin fabrics are dyed and printed, almost like veiling gauze, etc.; in order to avoid damage during processing, such goods are handled with particular care: they avoid putting them through washing machines; they age them exclusively in large cement tanks and even wooden vats, after soaking the goods in weak (0.2° Bé.) chloride of lime. Moreover, chlorination by machine is not practiced at all in the Alsatian bleachworks. Washing is carried out in the same tanks, while the spent chlorine solution is first pumped into a cellar beneath this room for a new use. Drying and correcting goods that are liable to skewing also require special methods and are usually done by clamping the edges (by hand) in the clamps of a fixed, very long frame, up to 20 m, the sides of which at the head end can be shifted relative to one another if it is necessary to straighten the weft. Beneath the frame there is a system of steam pipes and fans that dry the stretched fabric.

The goods are mercerized on machines of the type generally accepted in Russia as well, in most factories in the grey state; with a sufficient concentration of alkali (30°–32° Bé.) they do not seek to lower the temperature below that of the air. It is often considered necessary to add denatured alcohol to the alkali, which supposedly facilitates removal of the sizing substances. For the most part, the wash waters from the first part of the tenter frame (4°–5° Bé.) are utilized for supplying the preparation of new portions of alkali.

At some factories large departments for hand printing have been preserved. Obviously, this method of work will long continue to be used for covering large areas with complex designs. At the Köchlin & Baumgarten factory, magnificent imitations of tapestries are produced by this method on especially wide ribbed fabric; moreover, in order to be more like the originals, all designs, landscapes, and scenes are printed only with natural dyes. The production of such a tapestry requires 8–14 days of work.

Among very beautiful commercial articles, I shall also mention those obtained by printing the warp. A warp strongly slashed with size, tied at intervals of 1–2 cm by weft threads, passes through an ordinary roller printing machine, where a pattern is applied to it. It is then steamed (in the chambers mentioned below) and used as the white weft. As a result, very striking effects with blurred contours are obtained (so-called

Japanese) patterns. Among steaming apparatuses, alongside large continuous steamers and small fixing apparatuses, iron steaming chambers, operating intermittently and of comparatively small dimensions—4–6 m in length and 1–1½ m in width—are very widespread. They are closed at the top by a lid on bolts and allow a fairly high pressure to be maintained inside. The goods to be steamed, together with the padding, are folded, with the aid of a sliding crosspiece, into a piece about 2 m long and, placed in a sackcloth fabric, are slipped onto the axle of a roller rotating in the chamber from an external drive. All the rollers communicate with one another by internal gears, so that the goods are in continuous motion.

In most factories there are no engraving shops of their own. Under local conditions it proves more advantageous to order the rollers from a specialized factory. Power transmission is everywhere by steam. Each printing machine has its own “frog” engine. Only at Gross, Roman & Co. have some machines been converted to electric transmission.

One’s attention is drawn to the great prevalence (in Germany generally) of the mechanical feeding of fuel—small coal, small brown-coal briquettes—to steam boilers, and of the associated moving grate (Kettenrost). The latter, despite its apparent complexity, evidently has every chance of becoming firmly established in practice, for no slagging of the grate is observed, while damage to an individual grate bar can easily be repaired, and the bar itself can be replaced by a new one while it is passing outside, beyond the furnace space.

At the Mer Rouge factory we were shown in great detail an engraving shop operating by a photographic method (photo-engraving according to the patent of Dr. Martens). The process of preparing a roller by this method is far from as simple as it appeared on reading the first patents (Rolffs and others). First it is necessary to verify the original design photographically, since it may turn out that dyes which appear identical to the eye, and which therefore should be the same in the pattern, do not have the same actinic effect on the light-sensitive layer. Having thus corrected the draughtsman’s errors, one prepares, for each color and its principal shade (dark blue, light blue, etc.), a separate photograph on transparent film through the appropriate light filter. From each such photograph they make, after pasting beneath it ruled paper—for the future strokes of the engraving—secondary copies on collodion film, exactly coinciding with one another, whereby the total length of film occupied by them...

must be exactly equal to the circumference of the shaft intended for the pattern. For the sake of brevity I shall not go into the details of the special methods of “registering” these secondaries with one another and their combination with the shaft; I shall only say that (and this is the chief drawback of the method) it is extremely difficult, and with a screened drawing impossible, to achieve the complete absence of traces of the seam at the place where the ends of the film covering the shaft meet. To mask the seam, the edges of the drawing are left in the form of very elaborate zigzags; for screens, however, even this is not enough, and, according to the frank admission of the factory representative, one is forced to use the services of engravers. The shaft is prepared for exposure by being heated in warm water and, already dry, is brought into a room illuminated with yellow light, fastened in the machine, and, while it rotates slowly, a stream of light-sensitive material (albumen + ammonium dichromate) is poured onto it from capillary tube \(a\). The vessel with the light-sensitive material \(A\) is moved slowly (by means of a worm gear) along the axis of shaft \(B\). The spirally applied layer dries quickly on the warm shaft. The film bearing the drawing is glued onto the shaft prepared in the preceding manner and is secured with the aid of

Fig. 3.

rubberized paper (not over the pattern). The parts of the shaft covered with the film are then illuminated by an arc lamp while rotating for 10–20 minutes. After exposure of the whole shaft has been completed, it is treated with water, which dissolves the remaining layer and thereby makes it possible to judge the quality of the pattern. Being heated from within by a gas flame, the remaining drawing is sintered into a brown horn-like mass, dense enough to withstand the action of the etching solution. Before beginning the etching, the shaft must also be inspected and certain places protected (register marks, places that lay under the adjoining pieces of paper film, often the very ground of the shaft itself) by coating them with lacquer. After the lacquer has dried, the shaft is treated in a trough

with a rotating 35-degree (Baumé) solution of ferric chloride. The etching process is observed through a loupe, interrupted at the proper moment, the roller is washed with water, and, after removing the varnish and the remaining layer with turpentine and dilute acetic acid, a roller ready for work is obtained. According to our obliging guide, despite all the complexity of this method, the cost of production is 30% cheaper than by the mollet method. The shortcomings usually ascribed to etching—the lack of smoothness of the contours, the coarseness of the design—are not observed; on the contrary, very delicate features—brush strokes, pen drawings—are conveyed better than by the old method. Combinations of this method with mollet or pantograph engraving are also possible, which is especially important for fine grounds consisting of geometrical figures or dots requiring particular sharpness. The advantage of using photogravure is directly proportional to the richness of the design, since the cost of the operations inevitably connected with the method, being distributed over a larger number of rollers, lowers the relative cost of each.

At the large Keller-Dorian factory with its engraving shop, which serves many factories in the district, I had occasion to see a competitor to photogravure capable of striking it in its most sensitive spot. This is a method of work with multicolored patterns and a limited number of rollers, now spreading rapidly, according to the director, Mr. Heble. It is achieved by first preparing drawings for each roller (4–5 rollers) on transparent paper and, by superposing them one upon another, comparing how the colors combine (superposition des couleurs). If, with a sufficiently successful selection of dyes, these drawings are reproduced on the rollers in piqué, then printing with such rollers yields very good effects—from the mutual combination of the colors of the basic tones into new shades; moreover, it is very difficult to say that a pattern apparently containing more than ten nuances was in fact printed with four rollers. Which of the engraving systems will prevail the future will show, but for the moment it is still much too early to consign the mollet and pantograph methods to the archives.

In addition to the factories listed above, I also visited the electric station in Mulhouse, the artificial-ice plant there, the new slaughterhouses in Dresden, and certain premises of the Gehe & Co. factory there.

During the business trip the following works of mine were published—

1. The lightfastness of methylated oxyazo dyes. On certain derivatives of $\alpha$-methoxynaphthalene.—Journal of the Russian Physico-Chemical Society, 1910, p. 1458.

2. From the field of coloristics. On certain oxidative discharges with blue indigo. Journal of the Society of Siberian Engineers, 1910, No. 12.

3. On bisulfite compounds of oxyazo dyes, Journal of the Russian Physico-Chemical Society, 1911, p. 771.

4. A new synthesis of ortho-oxyazobenzol, ibid., p. 787.

5. Die Lichtbeständigkeit methylierter Oxyazofarbstoffe. Ueber einige Derivate des $\alpha$ Methoxynaphtalins, Ztsch. f. Farben-Industrie, 1911, No. 12.

6. Ueber Bisulfitverbindungen von Azofarbstoffen. Journal für prakt. Chemie, 1911.

7. Eine neue Synthese des o--Oxyazobenzols, ibid.

Tomsk.
September, 1911.