On the manufacture of chlorine : a lecture, delivered, at the request of the Council of the Society of Arts, before the Chemical Section of that Society, May 22nd, 1874, A.W. Williamson ... in the chair / by Walter Weldon.

  • Walter Weldon
Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the manufacture of chlorine : a lecture, delivered, at the request of the Council of the Society of Arts, before the Chemical Section of that Society, May 22nd, 1874, A.W. Williamson ... in the chair / by Walter Weldon. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    sclentltic truth by that then assistant to a provincial Swedish apothecary who has rendered for ever illustrious the name of ScHEELE. Within the hundred years which have now elapsed since this discovery, the annual value of the cotton goods manufactured in Great Britain has risen ft-om son^e- thing less than two hundred thousand pounds to close upon one hundred millions sterling. To this stupendous growth of what is now our greatest industry, we owe, in veiy large part, the vast development of all other of our industries, and the enormous increase in the numbers, wealth, and comfort of our population, which have accompanied it; and although the largest part towards this result has no doubt been contributed by mechanical invention, not even the steam-engine, the carding-niachine, the spinning-jenny, and the power-loom could have produced our modern ]\[anchester, and all that it represents, without the aid of that discovery in pure science which rendered it possible to perform in a few hourS; in a workshop in a town, at any season, and in any climate, that operation of bleaching which forms an essential part of the preparation for sale of most kinds of cotton goods, and which previously occupied at least four months, could be carried on only in the open country, could be well performed only at certain seasons, and could be best performed, for reasons of climate, only in certain countries, of Avhich England is not one, and which moreover required an enormo.us expanse of green field, which it withdrew entirely from agricultural service. The discovery of chlorine, and of its property of destroying vegetable colours, is thus to be counted as not the least among the causes of the marvellous industrial progress of the last hundred years; and we have also to claim for it whatever influence upon the incalculably beneficent activity of the printing-press may have been due to our command of a practically unlimited supply of white paper. Notwithstanding the continually increasing produc- tion of bleached vegetable textile fiibrics, and consequently