Willson, Thomas

One of the most important discoveries in the history of the chemical industry in Ontario was accidental. Thomas Carbide Willson (1860-1915) was trying to make the element calcium from lime, CaO, by beating tbe lime with coal tar. Instead, he made the compound calcium carbide, CaC2. This compound reacts with water to form a precipitate of calcium hydroxide and gaseous ethyne (acetylene). Willson s discovery led to the large-scale use of ethyne in numerous applications. 

A method for the commercial production of acetylene was discovered accidentally in 1892 by Thomas Willson (1860-1915). Willson was experimenting on aluminum production at his company in Spray, North Carolina. He was attempting to produce calcium in order to reduce aluminum in aluminum oxide, A1203. Willson combined coal tar and quicklime in an electric furnace and, instead of producing metallic calcium, he produced a brittle gray substance. The substance was calcium carbide, CaC2, which when reacted with water, produced acetylene. Willsons work led to the establishment of a number of acetylene plants in the United States and Europe during the next decade. 

This reaction was accidentally discovered in 1892 by the Canadian inventor Thomas L. Willson while looking for a method to make aluminum. 

Varanasi, Pushkara Rao, 320 Vest, R. W., 26 Wallow, Thomas L, 224 Wamme, Naoko, 249 Webber, Stephen E., 174 Willson. C. Grant, 174, 262, 292 Yabe, Akira, 40 Yamada, Shintaro, 262 Yamana, Mitsuharu, 110 Yang, Dominic, 95 Yoshino, Hiroshi, 110 Yueh, Wang, 292 Ziemann, Paul, 12... 

Thomas Leopold Willson was born at Princeton, a village be-... 

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