History acetylene chemistry

This contribution is derived from Strategy and System Reppe and the Development of Organic Chemicals in I.G. Farben, a paper presented at a meeting of the Society for the History of Technology, Madison, Wisconsin, 3 November 1991. Subsequently it has been reworked and presented at various seminars. It is based largely on my doctoral thesis, The Development of Acetylene Chemistry and Synthetic Rubber by I.G. Farbenindustrie Aktiengesellschaft, 1926-1945, Oxford University D.Phil., 1982. 

For the history of Rattwitz and Ludwigshafen synthetic rubber plants, see Morris, Acetylene Chemistry and Synthetic Rubber, pp. 322-329 Peter Hayes, Industry and Ideology, pp. 347-348 Alfred von Nagel, Athylen, Acetylen, pp. 48-50. 

Letter from Otto Ambros to author, 27 October 1980. For the history of the Auschwitz Buna factory, see Morris, Acetylene Chemistry and Synthetic Rubber, pp. 330-345 Peter Hayes, Industry and Ideology, pp. 347-368 the excellent thesis by Joseph Robert White, The Politics of Labor Utilization l.G. Farben, the SS and Auschwitz, Georgia State University MA thesis, 1989, and the less original work of Robert Simon Yavner, LG. Farben s Petro-Chemical Plant and Concentration Camp at Auschwitz, Old Dominion University MA thesis, 1984. Unfortunately, Deborah Dwork and Robert Jan van Pelt did not consult this literature (except for Hayes) for the chapter on l.G. Farben in their Auschwitz, 1270 to the Present (New York W. W. Norton, 1996). For a personal account, see Primo Levi, If this Man is a Man , a translation of Se questo e un uomo by Stuart Woolf (New York. Orion, 1959), also published as Survival in Auschwitz. 

Methylidynephosphine (HC=P), the parent member of this class of compounds, is isoelectronic with acetylene. It stands at the very beginning of the history of phosphaalkyne chemistry 5 two decades passed before the successful synthesis of the kinetically stabilized compound 9 (R = i-Bu, Scheme 2)19,20 that is employed most frequently for studies on this class of compounds. Figure 8.2 shows a survey of the general reactions of this highly reactive triple bond system. 

Nadar, Paris). Founder of thermochemistry and the science of explosives. He synthesised acetylene and bensene from their elements, and alcohol from ethylene, studied the polyatomic alcohols and acids, the fixation of nitrogen, the cbemistiy of agriculture, and the history of Greek, Syriac, Arabic, and medieval chemistry. He was a Senator of France, Minister of Public Instruction, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Secretary of the Academy of Sciences, and is buried in the Pantheon at Paris. 

A very interesting way of pumping a CO laser has been opened up recently in the discharge-initiated combustion of acetylene 130> or cyanogen 131>. Table 7 lists the published work on CO chemical lasers, arranged according to the chemistry it also reflects the history of the field. 

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