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I am currently wending my way through fragile but fascinating volumes of Chemical News - a journal published by Sir William Crookes in the late 19th and early 20th century. It was a major journal at the time, looking rather like the current Nature in it's breadth of coverage. The society journals of the time typically reserved their pages for papers read by members and abstracts of papers thought to be of interest to them, while Chemical News and it's ilk included book reviews, reports of papers from a wide swath of journals in several languages and two robust arenas for conversation between scientists, readers and editors: Correspondence and Notes & Queries. They were a bit more open, too, to offer space to offbeat bits of science.
The volume I just finished (1890) has a rather contentious conversational thread winding through the Correspondence on what it means to be a FCS (Fellow of the Chemical Society) and should membership be more tightly policed vis a vis their chemical credentials. (At one point the secretaries of the Chemical Society accuse a former board member of having used fake letterhead to secure support for his position!) Many participants in the conversation resort to pseudonyms, some of which carry a bit of snark with them, and it's interesting that this controversy is playing out primarily in a commercial journal and not in organs internal to the Society.
My project involves tracking the correspondence around primary reports of research findings, so these raucous conversations, while fun reads, are of peripheral interest. I'll admit to finding other interesting tidbits to tag in my electronic notebook. It doesn't pay to be overly focussed when doing archive work, as long as I can avoid being completely dragged down the rabbit hole.
The Notes & Queries section appears just above the one page of adverts included in each issue, and yesterday this ad caught my eye: "The Benzene Nucleus. — An India-rubber Stamp in nickel-plated locket with ink-pad enclosed" 3s. At the top of the page, the last bit of editorial content appears — a report of a curious invention: a stamp for making benzene rings. The first benzene ring in a journal appeared in Chemical News (in 1879, eight years after the first graphical structure was used), so perhaps it's apt that it report this "little contriviance" in its pages. (And the inventor is a Fellow of the Chemical Society!)
Nowadays chemical structure drawing programs are commonplace, but when I was a graduate student chemical structures had to be hand drawn, using India ink (permanent, not water soluble!) on vellum. The Rapidograph pens used were expensive and notorious for getting clogged (irreversibly so). Rings were made using stencils, text added using mechanical lettering guides. Jiggle your hand and you had trouble that white-out might not be able to rescue you from. Blots? Argh.
I don't miss the days of chancy ink drawings for slide and papers, though I do miss the delight of pulling out pens and ink and paper. I do wonder, though, if note taking organic students would appreciate a little ink stamp of a benzene ring on the end of their pencil or pen?
My project involves tracking the correspondence around primary reports of research findings, so these raucous conversations, while fun reads, are of peripheral interest. I'll admit to finding other interesting tidbits to tag in my electronic notebook. It doesn't pay to be overly focussed when doing archive work, as long as I can avoid being completely dragged down the rabbit hole.
The Notes & Queries section appears just above the one page of adverts included in each issue, and yesterday this ad caught my eye: "The Benzene Nucleus. — An India-rubber Stamp in nickel-plated locket with ink-pad enclosed" 3s. At the top of the page, the last bit of editorial content appears — a report of a curious invention: a stamp for making benzene rings. The first benzene ring in a journal appeared in Chemical News (in 1879, eight years after the first graphical structure was used), so perhaps it's apt that it report this "little contriviance" in its pages. (And the inventor is a Fellow of the Chemical Society!)
Nowadays chemical structure drawing programs are commonplace, but when I was a graduate student chemical structures had to be hand drawn, using India ink (permanent, not water soluble!) on vellum. The Rapidograph pens used were expensive and notorious for getting clogged (irreversibly so). Rings were made using stencils, text added using mechanical lettering guides. Jiggle your hand and you had trouble that white-out might not be able to rescue you from. Blots? Argh.
I don't miss the days of chancy ink drawings for slide and papers, though I do miss the delight of pulling out pens and ink and paper. I do wonder, though, if note taking organic students would appreciate a little ink stamp of a benzene ring on the end of their pencil or pen?
Read about K&E lettering sets here.
I think I am going to enjoy your sabbatical very much! What an interesting find although I take umbrage at the statement "gentleman preparing papers for the press" in the article. I suppose it's an artifact of the times but the fact that women chemists were not taking seriously lasted a long time.
ReplyDeleteIndeed - here's the start of the Chemical Society:
Deletehttp://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/1842/mp/mp842010a001
At the meeting which led to the founding ofthe American Chemical Society, there were women chemists in attendance, but when it came to taking a photograph to mark the occassion, the women were asked to stand aside.
DeleteAs late as the 1960s, ads in C&E News differentiated between men and women. Women chemists were sought for jobs in the library, men in the plant and laboratory.
It's probably worth noting that many secretaries (perhaps the bulk of them) were men at this point! Thanks for the link, Richard!
DeleteNice! it is rather sure that few people had devoted their time to study how graphical presentation and technical reproduction of scientific material did influence scientific knowkledge. In fact I didn't find any systematic study, years ago, when working on a short story of chemical textbooks vs. oleographic, xerographic and mimeographic school papers. I'm proud to be of the generation which learned to write and draw with stencils and then with Letrasets (and darkroom films!), so now I can fully appreciate computer graphics also in teaching.
ReplyDeleteThanks also for the link on lettering equipments.
Having grown up using a sliderule, I sometimes wonder if I shouldn't teach my general chemistry students to use one. It definitely helps develop a sense of orders of magnitude. Learning to do things the hard way definitely helps you appreciate the ease of computer drafting. Although I sometime wonder if we now end up taking too much time over the informal presentation of data. How long do students spend on powerpoints for group meeting rather than a well organized chalk talk?
DeleteSometimes I try to show how a sliderule helps to understand orders of magnitude but often the reaction is more or less as if I were explaining that when I was 16, like them, in Italy we had only three b/w channels on state TV, and nevertheless (or because of that?) we tried to be very informed and concerned about any Great Issue.
DeleteApart that ppt looks now a little bit out of fashion, there was a discussion about the utility of interactive whiteboards, "...for instance, you can record what you do on it...". My opinion was that taking snapshots of an old blackboard with your own smartphone is both cheaper and more effective (btw: very often I'm taking such snapshots, especially about lab schemes. It works).
For some reason I find myself wanting a stamp to make benzene rings! Maybe from my days of making block prints?
ReplyDeleteI go so immersed in something in the journal yesterday that I thought about writing the editor to ask about it -- except the editor is a century gone......
DeleteMight I add that drawing chemical structures in more or less modern form precedes 1879. In fact, I can trace it to 1860, where self-published pamphlets competed with chemical journals. If you look at this selection, I fancy you will have little difficulty in recognising most of the structures, including a great many that are cyclic. My favourite (apart from 239 for obvious reasons, since it resembles benzene very clearly), is 278, which attempts to impart a structure to Indigo.
ReplyDelete