Creating an Industry

Haber s laboratory version of ammonia synthesis was indisputably effective, but even after Brunck made the decision that BASF should proceed with the commercialization of the discovery doubts persisted inside the company about the success of such a costly, and seemingly open-ended, exercise. Given the absence of any precedent for running continuous catalytic synthetic reactions at snch high pressures and temperatures, it was only reasonable to expect that even with intensive effort it would take a very long time to transform Haber s bench model to a smoothly operating commercial plant.  

As with any pioneering endeavor—and particularly with such a complex effort in which both scientific and engineering problems had to be overcome before it was conceivable to go ahead with a full-scale project—there were unforeseeable complications that only inventive and dedicated teamwork could resolve. The contributions of Alwin Mittasch and his colleagues, who elevated the field of catalytic studies to a new level of accomplishment with their prolonged, extensive, and ingenious search for inexpensive but highly effective catalysts, were especially critical. But, as in the case of Fritz Haber and his collaborators, these do not diminish Bosch s extraordinary contributions (fig. 5.1).  

As already noted, Bosch s conviction was decisive in persuading the company s leadership to proceed with the commercialization of the process. He was the only expert who knew the capabilities of the steel industry, and he believed that a sizable high-pressure converter could be built he also believed that cheaper catalysts could be found, and that raw materials could be supplied in requisite amounts and purities. Bosch s inventiveness was decisive in removing a critical obstacle to further progress when the walls of experimental steel converters began failing after only short periods of operation. 

Carl Bosch (1874-1940) in a 1914 photograph. Courtesy of BASF Unternehmensarchiv, Lud-wigshafen, Germany. 

In the end, not only was Bosch able to pioneer what has become the world s most essential chemical synthesis, but he was able to turn Haber s and Le Rossignol s experimental design into a commercial success in an extraordinarily short time. In just four years the enterprise went from a 75 cm tall converter sitting on Haber s laboratory bench in Karlsruhe s Technische Hochschule and producing about 100 g NHs/hour to an 8 m tall converter installed at the first ammonia plant in Oppau and turning out up to 200 kg NHs/hour.  

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Knapp s work in this Pharmacist Workforce Challenges monograph is especially illuminating. She has compiled data from each segment of pharmacy practice and from virtually every perspective. This work is timely since other health professions are experiencing similar workforce issues, thus having created an industry wide problem. 

First movers, of course, cannot create an industry by themselves. They must develop close relationships with supporting enterprises—suppliers both of capital equipment and materials to be processed, research specialists, distributors, advertisers, and providers of financial, technical, and other services. Thus, the needs of the core firms lead to the emergence of a supporting nexus of interconnected and complementary—rather than competitive—enterprises. The nexus may contain small, medium, and even large firms in supporting lines of a wide variety of products and services. And it soon develops into a source for the creation of a wide variety of specialized firms. But only rarely do core companies emerge from the nexus. 

The discovery that certain faint blue star-like objects (quasars) might be used to probe the farthest reaches of the universe [149] created an industry in blue sky surveys (Table 8). Luckily for stellar science, these surveys are strongly contaminated by all sorts of evolved stars, including white dwarfs, hot subdwarfs and cataclysmic variables. Many of these are hydrogen-deficient, including the PG1159 stars, and various classes of helium-rich subdwarf and white dwarf. 

In 1910, Linde found the answer the double distillation column (Figure 5). The double-column system improved the production of high-purity oxygen by dramatically increasing the fraction of oxygen produced from the feed air (22). If one invention can be said to have created an industry, this one created the air separation industry. 

In the case of nuclear power, the technology has created an industry that has found at least a small home on every continent and continues to he an attractive environmental alternative to coal-fired electrical plants. In other areas, the use of the technology has revolutionized the way of doing things—most notably in the field of oil and gas exploration, where the use of radium wave devices has essentially replaced the century-old exploration system that rehed on geological formations and exploratory drilling to locate gas and oil deposits. 

ISI policy in this period successfully created an industrial base in Kenya, especially in light consumer industries such as textile and foodstuffs, but also in others such as metal products. Between independence and 1980, industrial output quadrupled, the share of GDP in manufacturing grew from 10.1% to 13.3% and the number of industrial establishments more than doubled (Ogonda, 1992 297-98). The increase in local manufacturing reduced the multinational companies (MNCs) share of industrial output, which however still accounted for 20% of industrial output in the early 1970s (Maxon, 1992 385). 

Creating an industry context that attracts capital... 

Eric Fawcett and Reginald Gibson accidently create an industrial viable... 

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