Chemistry in the Telephone Industry

HE public mind associates the chemist with glass retorts and evil smells, with war gases or the glare of furnaces against the sky. To the technical leader in industry, however, the wide distribution of chemists outside predominantly chemical enterprises has become a familiar fact. A casual reference to the thirty subject classification headings in Chemical Abstracts will serve to illustrate how widely industrial chemists have become disseminated and how large a volume of work they are producing. When one reflects that all engineering is essentially applied physics, and that it has become subdivided into a score of specialized fields, it seems very natural that chemistry also should have found varied applications as the sum total of chemical knowledge has increased. Perhaps the day is not far distant when the term "physical chemist" will represent to the lay mind as well-defined and distinct a calling as that of civil engineer. It is therefore only a part of a general movement in industry that has placed the chemist in a position of some importance in the telephone business. His relative importance in the communication field is small, as the industry must permanently remain essentially electrical rather 1 Ind. & Etigg. Chem., April, 1930. 603 604 BELL SYSTEM TECHNICAL JOURNAL than chemical. His usefulness depends primarily, not upon the number or size of the operations which are entrusted to his exclusive care, but upon the distinctive mode of thought which he contributes to a critical consideration of the methods and processes in use.