A
Chemical Engineering TimelineA
Chemical Engineering Timeline
(Please forgive my digression into other topics)
TIMELINE KEY
Topics
Relating to Chemical Engineering.
A
Digression into Miscellaneous Topics (often Chemistry)
Concerning
the Rise and Fall of Nations (Wars & Such)
"Enough already... go to the end."
~440
BC: Democritus proposes the concept an of atom to describe
the indivisible and indestructible particles that were thought to compose
the substance of all things.
~250
BC: Archimedes deduces the law of the levers and could evaluate
the relative density of bodies by observing their buoyancy force
when immersed in water.
~240
BC: Eratosthenes of Cyrene, director of Alexandria library, calculates
the size of Earth by measuring the sun's shadow at noon in Siena
(Egypt) and Alexandria.
~70: Pliny the Elder
writes his Historia Naturalis, a 39 volume universal encyclopedia, compiling
all that was known about the science of his day. Pliny died in Pompeii during
the eruption of the volcano the year 79.
~130: Claudius Ptolemaeus
(Ptolemy) writes a mathematical and geographical treatise describing all ancient
knowledge concerning distances and locations on the earth. He also developed
a star catalogue with 1022 entries. The Ptolomeic model placed the earth
as the center of the universe; the sun, stars and planets revolved around the
earth in circular orbits. This model remained the standard interpretation for
more than a millennium, until the time of Copernicus.
230: Romans create
life expectancy table for selling "annuities." Average life expectancy
is only 20-30 years.
1347: William Occam
enunciates the principle now known as Occam's Razor; "entities must not
be multiplied beyond what is necessary."
1450:
Johann Gutenberg receives from Johann Fust an advance of 800 guilders
to develop his printing press. Probably the first book printed was
a dictionary called Catholicon and then later the Latin Bible.
1492: Cristoforo Colombo
(Christopher Columbus) arrives on the shores of a new continent. The
continent was later called America in honor to the Italian cartographer Americo
Vespucci.
1500:
Leonardo da Vinci points out that animals could not survive in an
atmosphere that could not support combustion.
1543: Copernicus'
heliocentric model of the universe was a revision of the Ptolomeic model
which had become too complex and inaccurate to accommodate the known movement
of celestial bodies.
1546:
Hieronymus Francastorius wrote on Contagion, the first known discussion
of the phenomenon of contagious infection.
1616:
William Harvey demonstrates his findings on the circulation of
blood. In 1628 he published Exercitacio Anatomica Motu Cardis et Sanguinis
in Animalibus, in which he describes the function of the circulatory system,
including the notion of the heart as a mechanical pump.
1635:
John Winthrop, Jr., opens America's first chemical plant
in Boston. They produce saltpeter (used in gunpowder) and alum (used
in tanning).
1644:
Evangelista Torricelli devises the barometer.
1647
Blaise Pascal determines the pressure of air. He also invents
a machine to perform addition and subtraction; the Pascalina, a
remote precursor of calculating machines.
1660: Nicaise
Le Febvre, in Traité de la Chymie held that the function of
air in the respiration was to purify the blood.
1662: Robert Boyle
found that the volume occupied by the same sample of any gas at constant temperature
is inversely proportional to the pressure. This statement is known as Boyle's
law.
1666: Fire destroys
3/4 of London. Prompts introduction of fire insurance and municipal fire
departments.
1683:
Antoni von Leewenhoek discovers bacteria.
1687:
Isaac Newton publishes his "Philosophiae Naturalis Principia
Matematica". The whole development of modern science begins with this
great book. Newton set the foundations of mechanics, the theory
of gravitation, a theory of light, and also concurrently,
with Leibnitz, invents the calculus.
1720's:
Newcomen's steam engine comes into general use.
1722:
Réamur publishes "L'art de covertir le Fer Forgé
en Acier" solving the guarded secret of steel-makers; that
steel is iron containing just the right amount of carbon.
1749:
England begins a Lead-Chamber Method to produce sulfuric acid.
1750's:
Classic British Industrial Revolution begins (often said to last
until 1830's, however in many ways it continues to this day).
1760's:
James Watt improves on the Newcomen Engine.
1761:
Joseph Kölreuter publishes reports in artificial hybridization.
1766: Henry Cavendish
discovers "inflammable air" (hydrogen), which he concluded to be
a combination of water and phlogiston (oxygen), since its combustion yielded
water.
1770: John Priestley
discovers oxygen and showed that is consumed by animals and produced
by the plants.
1772:
Daniel Rutherford describes "residual air", the first
published description of nitrogen.
1772:
Joseph Priestley and Jan Ingenhousz investigate photosynthesis.
1773:
Stephen Hales makes the first measurement of blood pressure.
1775: Antoine Lavoisier
shows that fire is due to the exothermic reaction between combustible
substances and oxygen. He named a gas discovered by Cavendish, that burned to
produce water, hydrogen (Greek, water producer). Also demonstrated that CO2,
nitric acid, and sulfuric acid contained oxygen.
1776:
The United States declares its independence from England.
1780:
Antoine Lavoisier and Pierre Laplace publish their Memoire
on Heat, in which they reach the conclusion that respiration is a form
of combustion.
1781: The Americans
defeat the British in the last major battle of the War of Independence at
Yorktown, Virginia.
1781: Tobacco snuff
linked to cancer of nasal passage.
1783: Lazaro Spallanzani
performs experiments demonstrating that digestion is a chemical process
rather than a mechanical grinding of the food.
1785: Charles de
Coulomb measures the attractive and repulsive forces of electrically charged
particles, and discovered that these forces are inversely proportional to
the square of the distance.
1787:
Jacques Alexandre César Charles studies the volume changes
of gases with changes in temperature.
1787:
The U.S. Constitution is written.
1789:
Nicholas Le Blanc develops his process for converting common
salt into soda ash.
1795:
Alessandro Volta shows how to produce electricity by simply putting
two different pieces of metal together, with liquid or damp cloth between
them, and he thus produced the first electrical current battery.
1798: Thomas Robert
Malthus publishes his Essay on the Principles of Population.
1800:
Karl Friederich Burdach coins the term "Biology"
to denote the study of human morphology, physiology and psychology.
1802:
Louis Joseph Gay-Lussac announces the ideal gas law.
1802:
Jean Baptiste Lamarck elaborates a theory of evolution based
on heritable modification of organs.
1802:
The E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company (Du Pont) is founded and
builds a gunpowder factory along the banks of the Brandywine River
near Wilmington, Delaware.
1804:
Nicholas Theodore de Saussure publishes experiments on photosynthesis,
and described the balanced equation of the process.
1805:
Geoges Cuvier publishes his Lessons in Comparative Anatomy.
1806:
Louis Nicolas Vauquelin and Pierre Robiquet first isolated
an amino acid, asparagine, from asparagus.
1807: Humprey Davy
utilizes electric current to prepare metals from molecules such as; sodium,
potassium, magnesium, calcium, strontium and barium.
1809: Jean Baptiste
Lamarck investigates the microscopic structure of plants and animals
and perceived that cellular tissue is the general matrix of all organization.
He also published his Philosophie Zoologique, where emphasized the fundamental
unity of life.
1809:
Nicolas François Appert, inventor and bacteriologist, demonstrates
a procedure for preservation of foods by canning.
1810:
Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac deduces the equations of alcoholic fermentation.
1811:
Amadeo Avogadro demonstrates that equal volumes of all gases under
the same temperature and pressure contain the same number of molecules,
and that a fixed number of molecules of any gas will weigh proportional
to its molecular weight. Presently the accepted value for the Avogadro
number is 6.023 x 10^23 molecules per gram-mol.
1824:
Sadi Carnot publishes his Reflexions sur la Puissance Motrice du
Feu, setting various outstanding principles that constitute the basis of
actual Thermodynamics.
1827:
J. B. Fourier outlines atmospheric process by which earth's temperature
is altered, using a hothouse analogy.
1828:
Friederich Wöhler synthesizes the first organic compound
from inorganic compounds, preparing Urea by reacting lead cyanate with
ammonia.
1828:
Robert Brown first describes Brownian motion.
1830-40: Justus
von Liebeg develops techniques in quantitative analysis and applied them
to biological systems, and the concept that vital activity could be explained
in physicochemical terms.
1831: Michael Faraday
shows the relation between magnetism and electricity is dynamic. He
showed that not only was magnetism equivalent to electricity in motion but
also, conversely, electricity was magnetism in motion. Later, Clerk Maxwell
summarized in concise form the electromagnetic theory.
1833:
Jean Baptiste Boussingnault recommends the use of iodized salt
to cure goiter.
1835:
Ralph Waldo Emerson writes the essay Nature.
1835: Jöns Jacob
Berzelius demonstrates that the hydrolysis of starch is catalyzed
more efficiently by malt diastase than by sulfuric acid. He published the first
general theory of chemical catalysis.
1837: René Dutrochet
recognizes that chlorophyll was necessary for photosynthesis.
1838: Congress passes
act requiring boiler inspection and testing because of frequent steamboat
explosions. This is the first US legislation regulating a technology.
1839: Pierre François
Verhulst develops the logistic model of population growth.
1840:
Publication of Justus von Liebig's Thierchemie which united the
field of chemistry and physiology. He pointed out that that organic compounds
in plants are synthesized from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
while nitrogenous compounds are derived from precursors in the soil.
1842:
Julius Robert Mayer enunciates the Law of Conservation of Energy
(1st Law of Thermodynamics), after establishing the work equivalent of
Heat.
1845:
Herman von Helmoltz and Julius Robert Mayer formulate the
Laws of Thermodynamics.
1845:
Alfred Kolbe synthesizes acetic acid.
1846:
Joule demonstrates the equivalence for various forms of energy
(heat - electrical - mechanical).
1846:
An ether-soaked sponge became the first successful surgical anesthetic
helping to remove a tumor at the Massachusetts General Hospital
in Boston.
1848:
The American-Mexican War comes to a close.
1850's:
The first petroleum refinery consisting of a one-barrel still
is built in Pittsburgh by Samuel Kier.
1853:
Kerosene is extracted from petroleum.
1854: The Pennsylvania
Rock Oil Company becomes the first oil company in the US
1854: Colera epidemic
in London linked to contaminated water by Dr. John Snow. The removal of
the pump-handle at the Broad Street well prevented people from drinking
the contaminated water and stopped the epidemic.
1855: Benjamin Silliman,
of New Haven, Connecticut, obtains valuable products by distilling petroleum.
They include; tar, naphthalene, gasoline, and various
solvents.
1856:
Bessemer devises a process to make cast steel on a large
scale by blowing air through melted pig iron to burn the carbon and maintain
the resulting steel melted.
1856:
Seeking to make a substitute for quinine, the first artificial aniline
coal tar dye is developed by William H. Perkin.
1858:
Friederich August Kekulé von Stradonitz proposes that carbon
atoms can form chains.
1859: The first
commercially successful US oil well is drilled by E. L. Drake
near Titusville, Pennsylvania. This 70 foot well launches the petroleum industry.
1860:
During the First International Congress of Chemistry in Karlsruhe,
Canizzaro presented new methods determine atomic weights;
Oxygen weight of 16 was adopted as measuring basis of element weights,
thus setting Hydrogen's weight, the lightest known element, to approximately
1.
1860:
Louis Pasteur germ theory of disease revolutionizes concepts of
Medicine and public health.
1863:
Ernest Solvay perfects his method for producing sodium bicarbonate.
1863:
The British government passes the "Alkali Works Act"
in an attempt to control environmental emissions.
1864: Ernst Haekel
outlines the essential elements of modern zoological classification.
1864:
Louis Pasteur's demolition of the doctrine of spontaneous
generation.
1864:
Ernst Seyler performed the first crystallization of a protein:
hemoglobin.
1865:
The Civil War (1861-65) ends.
1865:
Friederich August Kekulé devices a ring model for
the structural formula of benzene.
1865: The first US
petroleum pipeline is built from an oil field near Titusville, Pennsylvania
to a nearby railroad.
1866:
Dynamite is developed by Alfred Nobel.
1866:
Celluloid is invented by a British entrepreneur named Alexander
Parkes ("The Father of Plastics").
1866:
Gregor Mendel published his investigations on plant hybrids and
the inheritance of "factors".
1866:
Ernst Heinrich Haekel hypothesizes that the nuclei of a cell
transmits its hereditary information. He was the first using the term
"ecology" to describe the study of living organisms and their
interactions with other organisms and with their environment.
1867:
The Typewriter is invented.
1868:
Charles Darwin elaborated the theory of pangenesis.
1868:
Jean Baptiste Boussingnault pointed out that plants require oxygen
for the photosynthesis.
1869:
Dmitri Mendelejeff published a chemical elements arrangement table.
This is the basis of the well known periodic table.
1869:
The Transcontinental Railroad is completed as the Golden Spike is
driven in at Promontory Point, Utah.
1869:
Celluloid was produced by John Hyatt in Albany, New York.
The breakthrough came about because of a search for an ivory substitute
that could be used to make billiard balls. Celluloid was the first
synthetic plastic to receive wide commercial use.
1870:
Justus von Liebeg proposed that all ferments were chemical reactions
rather than vital impulses.
1871:
Johan Friederich Miescher isolated a substance which he called "nuclein"
from the nuclei of white blood cells. This substance came to be known as
nucleic acid.
1872:
Carl Friederich Wilhem Ludwig and Eduard Pfünger studied
the gas exchange process in the blood and showed that oxidation occurs
in the tissues rather than in the blood.
1872:
Lodygin, produced the first incandescent lamps in Russia.
1873:
Barbed wire is introduced. Meat becomes plentiful as the cattle
population doubles between 1875 and 1890.
1873:
Anton Schneider observed and described the behavior of nuclear filaments
(chromosomes) during cell division, providing the first accurate
description of the process of mitosis in animal cells.
1873:
London fog kills 1,150 people; similar incidents repeated in the
following 20 years.
1874:
German graduate student Othmar Zeider discovers the chemical formula
for DDT.
1875:
Oscar Hertwig showed that the head of the spermatozoon becomes a
pronucleus and combines with the female pronucleus as the zygote nucleus,
thus establishing the concept that fertilization is the conjugation
of two cells.
1876:
The Telephone is patented by Alexander Graham Bell.
1876:
Nikolaus August Otto designed the first four stroke piston engine.
It is nicknamed the "Silent Otto".
1876:
The American Chemical Society (ACS) is formed.
1877: Wilhelm Friederich
Kühne proposed the term enzyme (meaning "in yeast") and distinguished
enzymes from the microorganisms that produce them.
1877:
Thomas Edison patented the phonograph.
1878: Josiah Willard
Gibbs developed the theory of Chemical Thermodynamics introducing
fundamental equations and relations to calculate multiphase equilibrium, the
phase rule, and the free energy concept. His work remained unknown until 1883,
when Wilhelm Ostwald discovered his work and translated it to German.
1879:
First electric train is presented at the international exposition
in Berlin.
1879:
Thomas Edison and Sir Joseph Swan independently devise the
first practical electric lights.
1879:
Saccharin is discovered by Constantin Fahlberg, a chemist at Johns
Hopkins University. The calorie free sweetener is 300 times stronger
than sucrose and has been sold commercially since about 1900.
1880:
Andrew Carnegie develops his first, large, steel furnace.
1880:
George Davis proposes a "Society of Chemical Engineers"
in England.
1881:
Billy "the Kid" is shot by Pat Garrett.
1881:
Louis Pasteur gave a public demonstration of the effectiveness of
his anthrax vaccine.
1882:
Thomas Edison builds the first hydroelectric power plant in
Appleton, Wisconsin.
1882:
Robert Koch discovers the rod-like tubercle bacillus responsible for tuberculosis
(TB).
1883:
Osborne Reynolds published his paper on the Reynolds' Number,
a dimensionless quantity which characterizes laminar and turbulent
flow by relating kinetic (or inertial) forces to viscous
forces within a fluid.
1884: The World's first
Skyscraper begins to be erected in Chicago.
1884: Patent
granted for chemical-coagulation filtration process.
1884:
The Solvay process is transferred to the United States and
the Solvay Process Co. begins making soda ash in Syracuse.
1884:
Svante Arrhenius and Friederich Ostwald independently defined
acids as substances which release hydrogen ions when dissolved in water.
1884:
Christian Joachim Gram invented his staining method for classification
of bacteria.
1884:
Viscose Rayon is invented by the French chemist Hilaire Chardonnet.
1885:
The gasoline automobile is developed by Karl Benz. Before
this, gasoline was an unwanted fraction of petroleum which caused many
house fires because of its tendency to explode when placed in Kerosene
lamps.
1886:
The first modern Oil Tanker, the Gluckauf, was built
for Germany by England.
1887:
August Weismann elaborated a theory of chromosome behavior during
cell division and fertilization predicting the occurrence of meiosis.
1887:
Emil Fischer elaborated the structural patterns of proteins.
1888:
George Davis provides the blueprint for a new profession as he presents
a series of 12 lectures on Chemical Engineering at the Manchester,
England.
1888:
Jack "the Ripper" kills six women in London.
1888:
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology begins "Course
X" (ten), the first four year Chemical Engineering program in
the United States.
1888:
Heinrich Hertz performed the first experiments with a receptor to
"hear" herzian radio waves.
1889:
Francis Galton formulated the law of ancestral inheritance, a statistical
description of the relative contribution to heredity made by ancestors.
1890:
Theodor Boveri and Jean Louis Guignard established the numerical
equality of paternal and maternal chromosomes at fertilization.
1890:
Emil Adolf von Behring discovered antibodies.
1891:
Heinrich Wilhelm Weldiger proposed the neuron theory of the
nervous system.
1891:
Marie Eugene Dubois discovered Java man and named it Pithecanthropus
Erectus, now known as Homo erectus.
1892:
Diesel develops his internal combustion engine.
1892:
Pennsylvania begins its Chemical Engineering curriculum.
1893:
Sorel published "La rectification de l'alcool" were he
developed and applied the mathematical theory of the rectifying column
for binary mixtures. William Ostwald proved that enzymes
are catalysts.
1894:
Karl Pearson published the first of a series of contributions to
the mathematical theory of evolution and methods for analyzing statistical
frequency distribution.
1894:
Emil Fischer conducted investigations which form the basis of the notion
of enzyme specificity.
1894:
William Maddock Bayliss and Henry Sterling studied the electric
currents in mammalian heart.
1894:
George Oliver and Eduard Albert Sharpey-Schaeffer first demonstrated
the action of a specific hormone; the effect of an extract of adrenal gland
on blood vessels and muscle contraction, upon injection in normal animals
it produced a striking elevation of blood pressure.
1894:
Tulane begins its Chemical Engineering curriculum.
1895: The German physicist
Wilhelm Konrad Roentgen discovered a new kind of radiation working with
the vacuum tube discharge. This radiation was called X-rays.
1895:
Linde develops his process for liquefying air.
1895: The first professional
US football game is played in Pennsylvania.
1897:
Badishe produces synthetic Indigo on a commercial scale in Germany.
1898: The US defeats
Spain in the Spanish-American War.
1899:
The first bottle of Aspirin goes on sale to the public.
1899:
Max Plank introduced the concept that light and all other kinds
of electromagnetic radiation, which were considered as continuous trains
of waves, actually consist of individual energy packages with well defined
amounts of energy quanta, proportional to its vibration frequency.
1900:
John Herreshoff, of the Nichols Chemical Co., develops the first
contact method for sulfuric acid production in the United States.
1900:
Automobile is welcomed as bringing relief from pollution.
New York City, with 120,000 horses, scrapes up 2.4 million pounds of manure
every day.
1901: J.P. Morgan
organizes the US Steel Corporation.
1901:
George Davis publishes a "Handbook of Chemical Engineering."
1901:
Oil Drilling begins in Persia.
1903:
Orville & Wilbur Wright fly the first powered aircraft
at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
1903:
The Ford Motor Company is founded.
1903:
Arthur Noyes, a prominent MIT professor, established a Research
Laboratory of Physical Chemistry.
1905:
Einstein has his "miracle year" as he formulates
the Special Theory of Relativity, establishes the Law of Mass-Energy
Equivalence, creates the Brownian Theory of Motion, and formulates
the Photon Theory of Light.
1906:
The San Francisco Earthquake kills hundreds and destroys the city.
1906:
Ludwig Boltzman dies. He has the equation: "S=k ln(W)"
carved on his tombstone in Vienna. Today it is known as the
Boltzman Principle, and provides a statistical relationship
between entropy (S) and the number of ways a system can be
configured (W).
1908:
The American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) is founded.
1908: Cellophane
is discovered by a Swiss chemist named Jacques Brandenberger.
1908: New Jersey starts
chlorinating water supply.
1908:
Svante Arrhenius argues that the greenhouse effect from coal
and petroleum use is warming the globe.
1908:
The General Motors Company is founded.
1908:
The first "Model T" rolls of the Ford assembly line.
1908:
Dr. Leo Baekeland ("The Father of the Plastics Industry")
discovers Bakelite in his laboratory in Yonkers, N.Y.
1910:
Bakelite production begins at the General Bakelite Company. The
plastic finds widespread use in; electric insulation, electric plugs
and sockets, clock bases, iron handles, and jewelry.
1910:
Synthetic Ammonia is first produced by the Haber Process
in Ludwigshafen, Germany.
1910: A US Rayon
plant is constructed by the American Viscose Co.
1911:
Sir Ernest Rutherford proposes his theory concerning the atomic
nucleus.
1912:
The Titanic sinks, killing 1513 people, after striking an iceberg.
1912:
Piltdown Man is proven a hoax.
1912:
Wilson's cloud chamber allows the detection of protons and electrons.
1913:
The Standard Oil Co. (Indiana) begins the thermal cracking of petroleum
in "Burton Stills".
1913:
Niels Bohr proposes his "solar system" model of the
atom.
1914:
Robert Goddard begins his rocketry experiments.
1914:
World War I begins in Europe.
1915:
The unit operations concept is articulated by Arthur Little.
1915:
Ford Motor Co. develops a farm tractor.
1915:
Toxic gas (Chlorine Gas) is used in World War I at the battle
of Ypres. Fritz Haber, primarily known for his ammonia production
process, supervises these deadly "experiments". Later,
his wife pleads with him to stop his work concerning poison gases.
After he refuses she commits suicide.
1915:
The Corning Glass Works begins marketing Pyrex glass.
1916:
William H. Walker and Warren K. Lewis, two prominent MIT
professors, established a School of Chemical Engineering Practice.
1916: German saboteurs
blow up the US munitions arsenal at Black Tom Island, New Jersey.
1917: The US enters
World War I.
1917:
A full-sized plant, producing nitric acid from ammonia, is built
by the Chemical Construction Co.
1918:
Fritz Haber receives the Nobel Prize for his work on Ammonia
synthesis. However, the award is highly protested because of
his prominent role in developing and delivering poison gas in WWI.
Ironically, Haber is forced to leave his beloved Germany in 1933
because he is part Jewish
1918:
Acetone is produced for the British in Terre Haute, Indiana.
1920's:
Cellulose acetate, acrylics (Lucite & Plexiglas), and
polystyrene can finally be produced in large quantities.
1920:
The 18th Amendment, prohibiting the sale of alcoholic
beverages, goes into effect. Many cases of blindness and death result
as people mistake wood alcohol (methanol) for ethanol.
1920:
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology starts an independent
Department of Chemical Engineering.
1920:
Ponchon and Savarit developed and presented the famous Enthalpy-Concentration
diagram useful to solve distillations calculations.
1920:
The Standard Oil Co. (New Jersey) produces Isopropyl Alcohol, the
first commercial petrochemical.
1921:
A 4,500 metric ton stockpile of ammonium nitrate and ammonium sulfated
exploded at a chemical plant in Oppau, Germany. The blast
and subsequent fire killed 600, injured 1500, and left 7000 people
homeless.
1922:
Thomas Midgley uses Tetraethyl lead as an antiknock additive
in gasoline.
1922:
Albert Calmette and Camille Guerin develop a tuberculosis vaccine,
BCG.
1922:
The first human diabetes patient is injected with insulin.
Mass production of this “wonder drug” soon follows.
1923:
Louis de Broglie demonstrated that radiation has corpuscular
properties, and that matter particles such as electrons present
ondulatory wave characteristics.
1925:
The AIChE begins accreditation of chemical engineering programs.
1925:
Rubber antioxidants begin to be used.
1925:
McCabe and Thiele present a graphical method for computing the number
of equilibrium plates required in a fractionating column for binary mixtures.
1926: Du Pont
and Commercial Solvents begin synthetic methanol production in the US
1927:
Hermann Miller used X-rays to cause artificial gene mutations
in Drosophila.
1929:
The stock-market crash on "Black Thursday" brings ruin
to thousands of investors.
1929: Alexander
Fleming observes the effect Penicillin has on bacteria. The breakthrough
occurred when he returned to his laboratory after a four week vacation.
An improperly sealed bacteria culture had been accidentally contaminated
by a number of molds and yeast. One of the molds had killed the bacteria
in the culture.
1930's:
The Wisconsin duo of Hougen & Watson stress the importance of
thermodynamics in Chemical Engineering Education.
1930's
& 40's: Michigan's Katz, Brown, White, Kurata,
Standing, & Sliepcevich help lay down some foundations in phase
equilibria, heat transfer, momentum transfer, and mass
transfer.
1930's: The US suffers
through the Great Depression.
1930's
& 1940's: Systematic analysis of chemical reactors begun by;
Damkohler in Germany, Van Heerden in Holland, and Danckwerts
and Denbigh in England. They explore mass transfer, temperature
variations, flow patterns, and multiple steady states.
1931:
Neoprene synthetic rubber is produced by Du Pont.
1933:
The Imperial Chemical Industries in England discover Polyethylene.
1933:
Du Pont begins production of Rayon tire cord fabrics.
1934
Perry's first edition of the Chemical Engineers Handbook is published.
1935:
Wallace H. Carothers, of Du Pont, discovers Nylon.
1936:
Rohm & Haas begins marketing Methyl Methacrylate plastics (PMMA).
1936:
The Houdry Process is used in the Catalytic Cracking of Petroleum.
1937: Polystyrene
is offered to consumers in the US by Dow Chemical. It finds uses in radios,
clock cases, electrical equipment, and wall tiles.
1938:
World War II begins in Europe.
1939:
Enrico Fermi, Otto Hahn, F. Strassman, Lisa Meitner, and Otto Frish discover
Nuclear Fission.
1939:
Nylon used for women's stockings.
1940's:
Polyethylene (electrical insulation and food packaging), silicones
(lubricants, protective coatings, and high-temperature electronic insulation),
and epoxy (a very strong adhesive) are developed.
1940:
Standard Oil Co. (Indiana) develops Catalytic Reforming to produce
higher octane gasoline and create toluene for TNT. Higher
octane gasoline helped the American and British fighters outperform their
German counterparts.
1940: First tire
from synthetic rubber produced in US
1941:
The United States enters World War II.
1941: Styrene-Butadiene
Rubber first produced in the US
1942:
Polyester resins introduced.
1942: Enrico Fermi,
and a team of scientists, operated the first man-made nuclear reactor
under a football field at the University of Chicago. A cadmium
control rod was suspended over the pile with a rope. Should
something have gone wrong, a scientist was to cut the rope with an ax, thereby
dropping the rod into the reactor, hopefully solving the problem. Ever since
then an emergency shutdown has been called a SCRAM, which stands for
"safety control rod ax man".
1942: New York State
grants Hooker Chemical Company permission to dispose of waste in clay-lined
abandoned Love Canal.
1943:
Government owned synthetic rubber plants help boost
war time production.
1943: DDT, a
powerful pesticide, first produced in the US
1944:
Teflon, Tetrafluoroethelene resins, marketed by Du Pont.
1944:
Selman Waksman discovers streptomycin, the first effective anti-tuberculous
drug.
1945: The US ends World
War II by detonating the Atomic Bomb over Hiroshima, Japan.
1945: After World War
II, the US broke Germany's enormous I.G. Farben into; BASF, Bayer,
and Hoechst.
1947:
A barge, the Grandcamp, loaded with fertilizer grade ammonium
nitrate catches fire and explodes destroying a nearby city and
killing 576 in what would later be known as the "Texas City
Disaster".
1947: The formation
of hydrocarbons from synthetic gas by the Fischer-Tropish Process.
1947: ENIAC
computer uses Monte Carlo methods to solve neutron diffusion problem
in atomic bombs.
1947:
The first off shore oil is drilled.
1948: A deadly smog
settled over the small steel mill town of Donora, PA. The noxious air
killed 19 and caused thousands to become ill.
1948: Müller awarded
Nobel Prize for inventing DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane).
1950's:
Television enters American homes.
1950:
The Korean War begins.
1950's
& 1960's: Minnesota's mathematical marvel of Amundson &
Aris stress the importance of mathematical modeling in Chemical
Reactor Engineering. Their work helps encourage greater mathematical
competence in Chemical Engineering Education.
1950's
& 1960's: Wisconsin's triumvirate of Bird, Stewart, &
Lightfoot reveal the unifying concepts of mass, momentum, and energy
transport. Their textbook, "Transport Phenomenon"
continues to be a phenomenon in Chemical Engineering Education.
1950:
Benzene produced from petroleum.
1951:
The first Fusion Bomb is tested.
1952:
Du Pont introduces Mylar polyester film.
1952:
4,000 die in a London smog.
1953:
Production of soap exceeded by synthetic detergents.
1953: Francis Crick
solved the three-dimensional structure of DNA molecule disclosed by James
Watson and discovered in 1950 by Erwin Chargaff.
1953: After an extremely
strong storm the North Sea floods southern Holland. More than 1800
people die.
1954:
Polyisoprene rubber developed.
1955:
General Electric produces synthetic diamond.
1955:
Government sells synthetic rubber plants to private industry.
1957: The Russians
launch Sputnik I, the first man-made satellite.
1957: Windscale
graphite nuclear reactor burns for 42 hours in England. Releases I-131.
Residents curtail milk consumption for safety reasons.
1957:
General Electric develops polycarbonate plastics.
1959:
The computer control of chemical processes gains credibility.
1959:
A large scale hydrogen plant, to produce rocket fuel, is
completed by Air Products.
1960:
Theodore Maiman builds the first LASER based upon the proposal
of Arthur Schawlow.
1961: Alan Shepard
becomes the first American into space.
1961: William McBride,
an Australian obstetrician, discovers that thalidomide, a mourning sickness
drug, causes birth defects. Twenty years later he similarly "discovers"
that debendox, another mourning sickness drug, also causes birth defects.
However, this time his McBride had altered his data. Debendox produces no ill
effects. In 1993, he was found guilty of scientific fraud by a medical tribunal.
1962:
The Russians remove their missiles from Cuba.
1962:
The smog in London kills 1,000.
1962:
Rachel Carson's book, "Silent Spring", presents an emotional
plea for protecting human health and the environment from
chemical pesticides.
1965:
American Troops enter the Vietnam War.
1965:
Bottles made from polyvinyl chloride gain market share.
1965:
NutraSweet is discovered by a researcher, Mr. James Schlatter, at
the G.D. Searle & Co. The calorie free sugar replacer is 200 times
sweeter than common sucrose.
1966:
Fist attempt to control organic solvent emissions made by Los Angeles'
Rule 66.
1968: Consumption of
man-made fibers tops natural fibers in US
1969:
The Apollo 11 mission succeeds by landing Man on the Moon.
1969:
The horribly polluted Cuyahoga River, running through Cleveland,
actually caught on fire.
1970's:
America's heavy dependence on foreign oil results in an Energy
Crisis as the Arabs stop shipment to countries which supported Israel
in the Arab-Israeli Wars.
1970:
America holds its first "Earth Day" on April 22.
1970:
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is formed. It consists
of 6,000 employees and has an annual budget of $1.3 billion.
1970:
Congress passes the "Clean Air Act" establishing national
air quality standards.
1972:
Congress passes the "Clean Water Act" to confront water
pollution.
1973:
The last American Troops leave Vietnam.
1973:
Stanley Cohen & Herbert Boyer perform the first experiment in Genetic
Engineering.
1973:
Construction on New York's "World Trade Center" and Chicago's
"Sears Tower" are completed.
1974:
Richard Nixon resigns from office.
1974: Cyclohexan
vapor from ruptured makeshift bypass pipe explodes killing 28
workers in Flixborough, England, prompting legislation for risk studies
in British chemical plants.
Mid 1970's: Toxic
releases including: the Kepone tragedy at Hopewell, VA; the PCB
contamination of the Hudson River; and the PBB poisoning of cows
in Michigan keep environment issues in the headlines.
1975: Catalytic
converters are introduced in many automobiles to meet emissions standards
established by the US government.
1975: Cable fire
at Browns Ferry nuclear reactor in Alabama almost leads to disaster. It
was caused by an electrician who used a candle to check for air leaks
below the nuclear plant's control room.
1975:
Du Pont recognizes the contributions of Nathaniel C. Wyeth. He was responsible
for introducing the plastic soda bottles made from polyethylene
terephthalate (PET) which quickly replaced their glass predecessors.
1975:
McDonald's fast food chain starts using Polystyrene to package
its hamburgers.
1976:
Congress passes the "Toxic Substances Control Act" regulating
toxic chemicals.
1976: Seymour Cray,
of Cray Research, makes the Cray-1 super-computer
1976: The US National
Academy of Sciences reports that chlorofluorocarbons (Freons) can deplete
the Ozone Layer.
1976: The US bans
the use of chloroform in drugs and cosmetics.
1976:
Viking 1 lands on Mars, becoming the first man-made object
to ever soft-land on another planet.
1977:The
FDA moves to ban Saccharin, a calorie free sweetener, because
it has been found to cause cancer in rats.
1977:
Raymond Damadian builds his first Magnetic Resonance Imager (MRI)
used to generate 3-D images of the human body using the principles
of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectroscopy (NMR).
1978:
Due to considerable grass roots pressure, the FDA decides to merely
require an information label on Saccharin, despite being shown to
cause cancer in laboratory animals.
1978: Chlorofluorcarbons
(Freons) are banned as spray propellants in the US because of fears over
the Ozone Layer.
1978: The US Government
begins limiting the amount of lead permitted in gasoline. The action
is taken to prevent deterioration of the platinum catalysts
in catalytic converters, not to protect the public's safety.
1979:
No one is injured, but many are terrified, by an nuclear reactor incident
at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania.
1979:
Soviet troops retreat from Afghanistan.
1979:
Genetic Engineering succeeds in synthesizing human insulin.
Late
1970's: Love Canal (in New York) and the Valley of Drums
(10,000 leaking hazardous waste drums near West Point, KY) keep environmental
issues in the news and are described as "ticking time bombs."
1980: The US Supreme
Court rules that General Electric can Patent a microbe
used for oil cleanup.
1980:
The "push through tabs" used on today's pop and beer
cans are first introduced.
1980: The US Government
bans the sale of lead based paints.
1980:
The Superfund, containing $1.6 billion, is formed to be used by
the EPA in cleaning up pollution sites.
1981:
Microsoft develops MS-DOS for the IBM PC.
1981: Chemical Process
Simulation software is released for the PC. Soon packages like DESIGN II,
ASPEN, SIMSCI (PROII), HYSIM, & CHEMCAD start appearing on engineering desktops.
1981: John Darsee,
a former Harvard researcher, was found to be faking heart study data.
His fraud had been propagated in almost 100 published research studies.
1981:
Gerd Binnig & Heinrich Rohrer develop the Scanning Tunneling Microscope
(STM) which is capable of resolving individual atoms on a surface.
1981:
NASA's "Columbia" Space Shuttle becomes the world's first
reusable space craft.
1983:
Carl Sagan, and a group of scientists, publishes an alarming report
concerning the long term climatic impacts of nuclear war.
1984: AT&T is broken
into "Baby Bells" by the US government.
1984:
Apple introduces the Macintosh personal computer.
1984: An accidental
toxic gas release by Union Carbide kills over 2000 and disables 10000
in Bhopal, India.
1985:
Richard E. Smalley and Harold W. Kroto discover "Buckyballs",
a soccer ball like molecule made of 60 carbon atoms.
1985: Low petroleum
prices lead to the cancellation of the US Government sponsored "Synfuels"
project, designed to develop alternative energy sources based on coal
or oil shales.
1986:
Chernobyl Nuclear Reactor #4 explodes, releasing large amounts of
radiation near Kiev, USSR.
1986:
NASA's Space Shuttle, Challenger, explodes shortly after
take off.
1986:
K. Alex Muller and George J. Bednorz discover a superconductor that
operates at 30 degrees Kelvin. This sets off an explosion in "high"
temperature superconductors.
1987:
Japan's "Nipon Zeon" company develops a plastic with "memory".
At low temperatures it can be bent and twisted, however when
heated above 37 degrees Celsius it returns to its initial shape.
1988: A Scanning
Tunneling Microscope produces the first picture of a Benzene Ring.
1988: North Sea
oil platform explodes prompting England to require risk assessments in oil
industry.
1988:
McDonald's fast food chain stops using the "clamshell"
to package its hamburgers because of fears over the CFC's used in
manufacturing Polystyrene.
1989:
An Exxon Oil Tanker, the Valdez, runs aground
in of the coast of Alaska.
1989: The fall of Berlin
Wall.
1989: "The New
Yorker" magazine raises the possibility that electromagnetic fields
might cause cancer. Over the next decade, US taxpayers spend $25 billion
funding studies which find no link between power lines and cancer. Similar epidemiological
studies in Canada and Britain also find no link.
1989: The Human
Geonome Project, designed to map all the genes in a human being, is launched.
1989: Stanley Pons
& Martin Fleischmann boldly announce the "invention" of cold
fusion. Results have never been duplicated and are agreed to have been faulty.
1990: Lithuania
declares independence from Soviet Union in March 11. As response USSR sends
troops and blocks gas and oil supplies.
1990: Federal Trade
Commission opens antitrust probe of Microsoft.
1991: The Soviet
Union formally dissolves.
1991: Washington D.C.
has a victory parade, celebrating the decisive US success against
Iraq in the Gulf War.
1992:
The Australian Government begins a three year plan to introduce
plastic $5, $10, $20, $50, & $100 bills.
1993: New York's "World
Trade Center" is bombed by terrorists. The explosive was created by a 26-year-old
chemical engineer educated at Rutgers University.
1993:
The high price of replacing a corroding heat exchanger causes the
Portland General Electric Company to retire, rather than repair,
its Nuclear Power Plant in Rainier Oregon.
1994: More computers
than television sets are sold.
1994: Eurotunnel
opens. The 50 kilometer long tunnel connects England with France.
1995: The Shinri
Kyo cult uses Sarin nerve gas in the deadly Tokyo subway attack.
1995: A bomb
made from ammonium nitrate fertilizer and fuel oil destroys the
Federal Building in Oklahoma City, OK.
1995: Dow-Corning
files bankruptcy after being sued by 19000 women over "faulty"
breast implants.
1996:
Dolly, a female sheep, becomes the first mammal to be cloned
from an adult mammal's cells. This incredible work was carried out
at Edinburgh's Roslin Institute, and its announcement sparked a rash of
discussion and legislation concerning the morality of cloning human beings.
1996:
Olestra, a fat-free fat replacer, is approved for use in salted
snacks by the FDA after 10 years of deliberation. Olestra is a novel lipid
made from sucrose and soybean oil. With up to 8 fatty acids attached to
the sucrose molecule, instead of the 3 fatty acids typically found in fat,
enzymes are unable to break down Olestra. The Procter & Gamble company
has been studying the safety of Olestra for nearly 30 years.
1996: Britain announces
that 10 people have contracted mad cow disease, or Bovine Spongiform
Encephalopathy (BSE), from contaminated beef. In response, 3.7 million cattle
are slaughtered.
1996: A NASA funded
team finds evidence that suggests microbial life may have existed on Mars
more than 3.6 billion years ago. The evidence consists of traces of organic
compounds and mineral features characteristic of biological activity.
1996: Troll offshore
platform begins collecting natural gas off the Norwegian coast. At 369 meters
tall (most submerged) and 656,000 tons it is one of the worlds largest structures.
1997: Mar's Pathfinder
becomes the first spacecraft to land on Mars in more than two decades. Its automated
rover provides close-up views of "Barnacle Bill" and other Martian rocks
while its novel airbag landing demonstrates NASA's commitment to more
numerous, less expensive missions.
1998: Government begins
antitrust trial of Microsoft.
2000: Y2K bug
costs $100 billion to fix. Doomsday scenarios averted.
Table
of Contents 
A
Century of ContributionsEngineering
& Scientific WagesPetroleum:
Distillation
Bibliography"The end already... go back to the top."
We always welcome COMMENTS, SUGGESTIONS, OR REACTIONS.
Special thanks to Luis Klemas & Murugan Selvan for their contributions...
Last updated on September 18, 2000 by Wayne Pafko...
