The Second World War

When war broke out it was poison gas that captured the government and public imagination as one of the worst of the prospective horrors of war. Aside from the issue of gas masks, government responses to the 

No doubt the British government had some scruples about the use of gas, and certainly by 1940 was well aware that in fact high explosive was a much more effective killer than any of the gases available to them. This was not the case in Germany. Starting in 1940 two new works were built, at Dyhernfurth and Gendorf, to exclusively produce mustard gas and the new lethal nerve agents, tabun and sarin.6 

Many different types of chemicals were made and tested as possible chemical warfare agents in most advanced countries between 1939 and 1945 but all the information available suggests that the conclusions of Sartori, in his review of this subject, are correct and that the most important areas of chemical research were connected with organophosphorous compounds - nerve gases.7 

In September 1939, as scientists prepared the first samples of sarin, the German Army launched its invasion of Poland. For the second time in a generation, German chemists were at the forefront of their nation s war effort. On 19 September Hitler told an audience in Danzig  

if England wants war she can have it. It will not be an easy war, as they like to think, nor a war fought in the way the last one was. It will be a war of such destructiveness as no one has imagined. We possess fearsome new weapons against which England will be defenceless... 8 

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The next phase which resulted in the worldwide acceptance of eddy current technology for testing metals was the work of Dr Friedrich Foerster. Dr Foerster, a modem Giant, has rightly been called the father of modern eddy current testing (Ref 5). His early work was driven by the priorities of the Second World War, after which he embarked upon major research and... 

The basic ideas of thermoelectricity have been known for nearly two centuries, but until well after the Second World War the primary use was for temperature measurement (qv) using metallic wires. Then, upon improvements in semiconductor technology, thermoelectric power generation and refrigeration came under serious consideration. 

After the second World War, German firms manufacturing indigotin faced serious competition from Knglish and American dyestuff companies. To counteract this, the Germans developed continuous operations for manufacturing the dye. However, because of the complexity of the equipment and the operations (126), the batch process is still the preferred manufacturing method. 

During the Second World War Anatoly K. Babko and his students were evacuated to Ufa (Russia) to work for the defensive industry. 

The use of casein plastics was severely curtailed with the development of synthetic polymers, particularly after the Second World War. In addition stricter regulations concerning health and safety at work will have caused attention to be drawn to the formolising process. In the experience of the author the environment surrounding the formolising baths is most unpleasant and this will have accelerated the demise of the casein manufacturing industry. 

After the Second World War, the technical innovations, both in steelmaking and in the physical metallurgy of steels, continued apace. A number of industrial research laboratories were set up around the world, of which perhaps the most influential was the laboratory of the US Steel Corporation in Pennsylvania, where some world-... 

Acrylics are some of the most common and most versatile materials used in the PSA industry. Although the basic monomers and some of the acrylic polymers have been known for about a century, their commercial application as pressure sensitive adhesives did not happen until after the Second World War. 

Fluid bed reactors became important to the petroleum industry with the development of fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) early in the Second World War. Today FCC is still widely used. The following section surveys the various fluid bed processes and examines the benefits of fluidization. The basic theories of fluidization phenomena are also reviewed. 

Yttrium and lanthanum are both obtained from lanthanide minerals and the method of extraction depends on the particular mineral involved. Digestions with hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, or caustic soda are all used to extract the mixture of metal salts. Prior to the Second World War the separation of these mixtures was effected by fractional crystallizations, sometimes numbered in their thousands. However, during the period 1940-45 the main interest in separating these elements was in order to purify and characterize them more fully. The realization that they are also major constituents of the products of nuclear fission effected a dramatic sharpening of interest in the USA. As a result, ion-exchange techniques were developed and, together with selective complexation and solvent extraction, these have now completely supplanted the older methods of separation (p. 1228). In cases where the free metals are required, reduction of the trifluorides with metallic calcium can be used. 

The pioneering work carried out in Germany in the 1920s showed that appropriately substituted aminoquinolines and amino-acridines afforded a series of synthetic compounds that exhibited antimalarial activity.The exigencies of the Second World War led to a massive program aimed at the same goal in this country. This work led to the development of two distinct structural classes of quinoline antimalarials the 4-amino-7-chloroquino-... 

The career of Charles H. Townes and the development of the laser exemplify the technological revolution of the twentieth centui y. hollowing the second world war, the United States experienced a golden age of science. Basic research flourished with unprece-... 

The role of the gas turbine is more familiar to many of us in the aircraft field. However, since Sir Frank Whittle invented the jet engine in the early pioneering years before the Second World War there has been rapid development in both output and efficiency of these machines, and today the gas turbine is a popular choice for electricity generation. 

There has been an increasing level of nitrate contamination of borehole supplies in the east of England, because of the use of agricultural fertilisers since the Second World War . Nitrates are known to exacerbate certain corrosion processes e.g. at soldered joints however the maximum value allowed for this ion by the EC drinking water directive (50 mg NO3 r ) should limit its significance. 

Prior to 1940, the use of synthetic elastomers in linings was negligible, but the advent of the Second World War, and the consequent loss of natural rubber sources to the Allies, led to the use of synthetic rubber, namely a styrene-butadiene copolymer which, whilst not having all the properties of natural rubber, proved to have adequate anti-corrosive performance. 

A number of such processes were established before the second World War in Germany, Japan, and France for the production of hydrocarbon mixtures in the liquid fuel range (P2). This way of manufacturing automotive fuels is now uneconomical in most areas, but related processes may be utilized for the production of various chemicals, such as paraffinic waxes or oxygenated compounds. (The manufacture of methanol from carbon monoxide and hydrogen, usually by catalytic reaction in fixed-bed gas-particle operation, is an important process of this type.)... 

The synthesis of toxic organic compounds by humans, and their release into the natural environment began to assume significant proportions during the 20th century, especially after the Second World War. Prior to 1900, the chemical industry was relatively small, and the largest chemical impact of humans on the environment was probably dne to the release of hydrocarbons, especially polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), with the combnstion of coal and other fuels. 

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