A Chemical Curiosity

1895

Carbide of Calcium and Water Produce a Brilliant Illuminating Gas.

Decidedly the most interesting and curious of recent chemical products is calcium carbide, or calcium acetylide, as it might be called from a theoretical chemical point of view. It was first described by Wohler, who made it by strongly heating an alloy of zinc and calcium with charcoal, but it is now turned out on a considerable scale by heating a mixture of dry lime and coal dust in an electric furnace. In other words an immense electric current, such as is used in the production of aluminium, for example, is passed through the mixture, whereupon a part of the carbon takes the oxygen from the lime and carries it off as carbon monoxide gas, while another part of the carbon combines with the calcium thus set free. Analogous bodies, all of which are explosive, are formed with copper, silver, sodium and potassium. The noteworthy feature of the new compound, which is of a greenish gray color and somewhat resembles the mineral serpentine, is that, on contact with water, it develops acetylene, the hydrogen of the water combining with the carbon to form this gas, while the oxygen of the water forms lime by combination with the calcium.

From information kindly given by Dr. Henry Morton of Stevens institute it appears that the calcium carbide is claimed to be obtainable at a cost of £3 or £4 a ton. If this be so, the compound would promise well as a source of illuminating gas, since acetylene gas burns with a very luminous flame. In a country house, for example, it would be necessary only to have a closed vessel, charged with the calcium carbide and provided with an automatic stopcock, which would allow water to flow in as required. Then, the piping of the house being connected with the closed vessel, and with a small gas holder to regulate pressure, the light supply would be complete and automatic. A piece of carbide of calcium may be held in the hand and sprinkled with a few drops of water. A gas will then be developed which may be lighted with a match and will continue to burn as long as a few drops of water are sprinkled on the substance from time to time. — Cassier's Magazine.

A Drop of Ether

1895

In Chemistry a Small Element Counts For Much In Results.

Among condiments alcohol must be reckoned. It is a pluralist condiment, however, and — it goes without saying — is a dangerous condiment in more senses than one. A good deal that has been said about alcohol might be urged against other condiments. Mustard, for example, if largely mixed with water and freely taken, produces vomiting and occasionally inflammation of the intestinal mucous membrane. Salt, even under circumstances when not counterbalanced by vegetable juices, induces a disease of hideous type. In respect of alcoholics, the result of their employment depends on the quantity and quality taken. Alcohol given quickly in large doses is a deadly poison. Diluted alcohol taken slowly and repeatedly during the day irritates the mucous membrane of the stomach and secondarily the neighboring organs and does violence to the delicate tissues. The nearer the fluid is to "absolute" alcohol the more injurious it is likely to prove.

But the combinations of alcohol with other substances besides water modifies its effect in some instances for the better, in others for the worse. In looking through a pair of spectacles, the glasses of which are tinted with one metal, the world seems of a fire tint; with another metal the world seems cold and ghastly, frozen and dead. Infinitesimal quantities of added matter, so to speak, entirely alter the properties of the man. The domain of the infinitely minute is a broad one. It was lately stated at a scientific meeting that a single drop of ether thrown on the floor of the laboratory would entirely prevent the success of experiments illustrative of certain electrical phenomena. A pinhole in the door of a photographer's "developing" room will ruin his freshly taken plates. — New Science Review.

Dr. Arthur Lachman: Dec. 4, 1873-Nov. 30, 1957

(Click graphic for better view.)

1920

Big Reward for Missing Man

Harold Lachman of Chicago, whose present address is 358 Holbrook building, San Francisco, Cal., at latest reports from him had not succeeded in finding his missing brother, Prof. Arthur Lachman, who disappeared from San Francisco several weeks ago, as stated in the Blade's columns last week. As the Blade then explained, a large cash reward is offered to any one who can furnish information that will lead to the present whereabouts of the missing man, who is a distinguished chemist. He is believed to have wandered away while under an attack of forgetfulness due to overwork. He is 50 years old, of medium height and weighs about 165 pounds. He wears a short sandy mustache, is a learned man and kindly in his manners. Any Blade reader meeting such a man will do well to ask him if he is not Prof. Arthur Lachman of San Francisco. Whoever discovers him will receive a generous reward.

—From the "Lost Trails" column of The Saturday Blade, Chicago, "A Department Devoted to Aiding Readers of the Blade in Finding Lost Relatives," Jan. 3, 1920, p. 12.



Dr. Lachman Tells Story of Amnesia

1920

San Franciscan, Missing Six Months and Mourned As Dead, Returns Home After "Finding" Himself at Chico

Scientist, for Whom Country Was Searched, Cannot Give An Account of Wanderings Nor Explain Scar on Face

As one who had returned from the grave, Dr. Arthur Lachman, distinguished scientist of San Francisco, who has been missing for six months and has been mourned as dead, is today seeking to adjust himself to his old surroundings. Lachman, according to his wife, and to a brother-in-law, Morris Ballen of Berkeley, has been a sufferer of amnesia and it was not until yesterday that he regained his mental faculties.

The search for Lachman has extended throughout the country for the last half year and has been furthered by the posting of a reward of $1000 for information concerning the missing man. "When one clew after another failed Mrs. Lachman became convinced that her husband had met with death and withdrew the reward two weeks ago.

BROTHER RECEIVES FIRST INFORMATION

Yesterday Charles Lachman, a brother, received the following telegram from Chico:

"Leaving Chico. Due San Francisco 6:30 p. m. Cannot understand matters."

When the message was received at the Lachman home, 143 Fourteenth avenue, San Francisco, Mrs. Lachman notified her brother in Berkeley and arrangements were made to meet Lachman.

Worn and shabby, but with his mental faculties apparently restored, Lachman arrived at his home and was the center of a dramatic reunion with his wife and fourteen-year-old daughter. He said that he awakened yesterday morning to find himself in strange surroundings.

"When I asked a pedestrian where I was," Lachman told his wife, "he said the place was Chico. Then to my astonishment I learned that the date was May 19. Unable to account for my being in Chico I decided to telegraph my brother. I am glad to be home. It seems like the end of a bad dream."

It is believed a fall or shock in Chico served to restore the mental balance of the scientist, although at Chico it is said that there is no knowledge there of any accident to the man. A new scar on Lachman's forehead cannot be explained by him.

LACHMAN REMAINS AT HOTEL FOUR DAYS

According to Night Clerk Don McLain of the Hotel Oaks at Chico, Lachman registered at the hotel there on May 15 as "A. Lachman, San Francisco," and ordered his meals served in his rooms. After a day passed in bed he appeared occasionally, and there was nothing abnormal in his actions, the clerk said. At one time he said he had just completed a vaudeville tour. Tuesday night he attended a motion picture show and announced that he would check out for San Francisco in the morning.

"Where Lachman has been since December 11, 1919, until the time he registered at Chico a few days ago is a mystery to him and to his family. In response to the nationwide appeal he had been reported in various places about the country. He has carried insurance policies amounting to $115,000.

—Oakland Tribune, Oakland, CA, May 20, 1920, p. 1.


Death

1957

NEW YORK (UP) — Dr. Arthur Lachman, 83, former associate professor of chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley, died Saturday in a hospital here. The San Francisco native also had taught at the University of Michigan and the University of Oregon. He discovered the Lachman process for refining crude petroleum in 1929.

—Hammond Times, Hammond, Louisiana, Dec. 2, 1957, p. 10.

Note: "Saturday" was Nov. 30. Pronounced Lok'man (with a dot over the "a," which I think would be Lok'mun), according to Who's Who in America 1950-51, born Dec. 4, 1873 in San Francisco. Obit for him was published in the NY Times, Dec. 1, 1957, p. 88, with an erratum of some sort on Dec. 2, 1957, p. 27. The obit info is from Biography Index, Sept. 1955-Aug. 1958.

The photo credits are: Top: From The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Jan. 3, 1920, p. 12. Bottom: From The Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry, Vol. 12, No. 2, p. 198. Information on Dr. Lachman's books can be found at Google Books. This is the link for the "Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry" graphic (pdf).

"What Is Man?"

1919

Interesting Answer Dealing With Physical Makeup

A man weighing 150 pounds will contain approximately 3,500 cubic feet of gas — oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen — in his constitution, which at 80 cents a thousand cubic feet would be worth $2.80 for illuminating purposes, asserts a writer in the Electrical Experimenter.

He also contains all the necessary fats to make a 15-pound candle, and thus, together with his 3,500 cubic feet of gases, he possesses considerable illuminating possibilities. His system contains twenty-two pounds and ten ounces of carbon, or enough to make 780 dozen, or 9,360 lead pencils. There are about fifty grains of iron in his blood and the rest of the body would supply enough of this metal to make one spike large enough to hold his weight.

A healthy man contains fifty-four ounces of phosphorus. This deadly poison would make 800,000 matches or enough poison to kill 500 persons. This, with two ounces of lime, make the stiff bones and brains. No difference how sour a man looks, he contains about sixty lumps of sugar of the ordinary cubical dimensions, and to make the seasoning complete, there are twenty spoonfuls of salt.

If a man were distilled into water, he would make about thirty-eight quarts, or more than half his entire weight. He also contains a great deal of starch, chloride of potash, magnesium, sulphur and hydrochloric acid in his wonderful human system. Break the shells of 1,000 eggs into a huge pan or basin, and you have the contents of a man from his toenails to the most delicate tissues of his brain.

And this is the scientific answer to the question, "What is man?"

May Yet Make Diamonds

1905

Inventors Hope to Eliminate Silicon from New Carbon Compound

Utilization of waste products has taken a long step forward, according to the inventors of a new furnace, as by their method of combustion the well-known abrasive, in its present chemical combination of silicon and carbon, is simply a byproduct and until its identity with the commercial product was established was given away for ornaments, valued because of their attractive crystalline formation and peculiar coloring.

Since its value was indicated the waste has been subjected to all sorts of tests and in some instances has shown a slightly greater degree of hardness than the carborundum produced by means of the electric current applied at enormous voltage for a number of hours, which is slightly less than that of the diamond.

This fact has started investigations which lead to the hope, based, it is said, on good foundation, that the silicon may be entirely eliminated from the product, leaving it pure carbon, chemically the counterpart of the diamond. It is asserted that with a proper selection of materials for combustion in the furnace this result can be obtained, and while the carborundum at present produced has a high commercial value the investors are not inclined to rest content with that if anything more valuable is in sight.

One Cure For Vagrancy

1900

Policeman's Simple Scheme to Make Door-Sleepers Move On

The New York police force is credited with being one of the best in the world, but at least one member of it is a genius born for greater things. He has invented a method for ridding his beat of vagrants and doorstep sleepers.

This officer is attached to the Church street station, and patrols in the neighborhood of Washington street and the Battery, where cheap lodging houses, small beer saloons, "labor agencies," and the genuine "Weary Willie" luxuriantly abound, so he has almost daily opportunity to test his invention.

The vagrant is not particular where he sleeps, so that it costs nothing, and doorways are favorite lodging places. It was a sleeper in one of these that received a never-to-be-forgotten shock the other day. He was asleep in the doorway of a saloon, with his head thrown back against the jamb and his legs sprawled over the pavement. "Watch me make him more on," said the inventor. His hand went under his coat-tails, and it looked as if he were going for his gun in deadly earnest.

A spectator stood petrified, waiting to see a bloody tragedy enacted, but the bluecoat pulled out a small vial, and leaning over the sleeper, poured some of the contents on his thick, reddish mustache. The effect was electrical. With a wild snort and a gurgling gasp the hitherto inert figure sprang into the air and clawed at his mouth and throat; the tears streamed out of his eyes, which were distended with terror, and he stood gasping and making horrible faces and still clawing frantically at his mouth and throat, while the policeman smiled grimly and waited for the customary denouement. It came in a moment.

As soon as the terrorized doorstep lodger had recovered enough of his breath to permit his moving he started hurriedly up Washington street, sans coat, sans hat, sans everything but a consuming desire to put as much distance between himself and that door as possible.

The policeman laughed heartily as he watched the rapidly retreating figure. "I'll bet he don't come back here again," he said. That dose'll last him for a month. Ammonia's a great thing. It's better than insect powder, and it saves making arrests. That fellow is not only obeying the move-on ordinance, but the dose sobered him up, to boot." — New York Mail and Express.

Radio-activity and Life

1906

European Scientist Speculates on Some interesting Analogies

J. J. Laudin Chabot makes, in the Physikalische Zeitschrift, some striking speculations on certain analogies shown by the phenomena of radio-activity with ebullition on the one hand, and with the decomposition as accompanying, say, the life of albumen, on the other.

The atoms of radio-active substances are in a state of unstable equilibrium. Some of them every now and then pass abruptly into the next state. The passage amounts to an explosion, although it differs from ordinary explosions in not necessarily tending to the simultaneous explosion of all other atoms around. A somewhat similar phenomenon is presented by a boiling liquid.

Some striking analogies to the behavior of the emanations and the rare gases such as argon and helium are offered by nitrogen, which is a constituent of nearly every explosive substance. Among the compounds of nitrogen, cyanogen (carbon plus nitrogen) deserves special consideration on account of its importance in the decomposition of albumen. All the nitrogenous compounds resulting from the decomposition of albumen contain syanogen. This has a high internal energy, and it is therefore extremely unstable. Pflueger believes it to be a constituent of all living matter, and calls cyanic acid a "semi-living" molecule.

The presence of oxygen compounds increase the instability of the cyanogen compounds, so that, as in the case of the emanations, the least impulse suffices to make the living molecule explode and produce helium. The transformation of albumen takes place according to the same mathematical law as does the decay of radio-activity. Like the radio-active substances, albumen has a limited and predetermined life.

The phenomenon of life would thus become in principle identical with those of radio-activity, by an equally necessary result of known causes, but of a much wider scope in nature.

Milk Without Cows Obtained In Orient

1920

Chemist Has Scheme to Eliminate Old Bossy.

How good milk can be obtained without dependence on cows is an interesting suggestion. It is claimed that the demand for good milk and cream may be met without the presence of cows, providing transportation, water and power are available. A prominent American chemist offers the following recital:

"First of all, let us recall that copra is an article of commerce and consists of the dried meats of cocoanuts. It contains from 50 per cent to 63 per cent of oil. There is hardly any limit to the amount that may be produced.

"In India, Cochin China, the South Sea islands and elsewhere the oil has been used as food since the dawn of history, for the fats contained in it are singularly like the milk fats of mammals in most respects. It is already in wide use in this country as 'nut margarine,' which is cocoanut oil into which some butter has been melted and the whole churned with skim milk and worked as ordinary butter."