Divall and Sean Johnston

Much of the historiography of chemical engineering as a kind of industrial practice and 

Klaus Buchholz, Verfahrenstechnik (Chemical Engineering) - its development, present state and structures, Social Studies of Science, 9 (1979), 33-62 and, less convincingly, Karl Schoenemann, The separate development of chemical engineering in Germany, in History of Chemical Engineering, op. cit. (3), pp. 249-272. 

Tracing the origins of concepts is difficult when the inchoate professions that are trying to appropriate them are in a state of flux, and, reflecting this, the intellectual features of chemical engineering up to 1939 have been described in various and inconsistent ways. Olaf Hougen and Franklin J. Van Antwerpen, for example, identify the unit operations 

More importantly, he claims that the particular technical requirements of petrochemical processing - namely physical operations such as distillation - explain the readiness of US manufacturers to accept the conceptual framework of the unit operations. By contrast to the American case, a unique occupation combining mechanical and chemical expertise failed to coalesce in Germany the main reasons were that the petrochemical industry there was negligible, and much more complex chemical syntheses dominated the dyestuffs and pharmaceuticals industries. The occupational specialization involved 

David A. Hounshell, From the American System to Mass Production, 1800-1932 the Development of Manufacturing Technology in the United States (Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press, passim John K. Brown, The Baldwin Locomotive Works, 1831-1915 A Study in American Industrial Practice (Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995). Brown finds no unique features in the American context of the capital goods sector. 

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