- 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:
M�ller awarded Nobel Prize for inventing DDT
(dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane).
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