1. Gilbert T. Morgan, “Synthetic indigo. A romance of the chemical industry,” in “Science and Industry. The Organic Chemical Industry in England,” supplement to the Manchester Guardian, 30 June 1917, p. 21. In 1916, Morgan, at one time editor of the Journal of the Chemical Society, had been appointed professor of applied chemistry, City and Guilds Finsbury Technical College, London. For an account of the first production of indigo in England see Peter Reed, “The British chemical industry and the indigo trade,” British Journal for the History of Science, 25 (1992), 113–125.
2. See in particular Roy MacLeod’s contribution to this volume. For French attempts to imitate German processes in the immediate post-war period see Lothar Meinzer’s paper. Compare also Rolf Petri’s description of the situation in Italy, where notable progress was made in the high pressure synthesis of ammonia. Unlike most other contributors to this volume, I place the greatest emphasis on products and processes, in part because so many of them, such as amino plastics and novel adhesives, have escaped the historian’s attention. Nevertheless, the stress is on the ways in which novel products and processes were created to satisfy new and different needs, partly in response to the clearer recognition that the manufacture of organic chemicals had become an important strategic industry.
3. “Achievement,” Chemistry and Industry,58 (8 April 1939), 297. Sir Gilbert T. Morgan, who in 1917 the account on synthetic indigo (note 1), had recently retired as director of the National Chemical Laboratory, Teddington, and was coauthor, with David Doig Pratt, of British Chemical Industry. Its Rise and Development (London: Longmans, Green, 1938), an historical account that emphasized the need for self-sufficiency. Relevant here also is Morgan’s, “The trend of researches in plastic materials,” Chemistry and Industry,57 (1 January 1938), 3–11, based on his Presidential Address to the Institute of the Plastics Industry.
4. Herbert Levinstein, “The impact of plastics on industry: The need for national planning,” Chemistry and Industry,58 (8 February 1939), 189–191.
5. Ibid., p. 191. Manufacture of calcium carbide was originally carried our for lighting purposes, and was widely used by railways and cyclists. It remained an important source of lighting in countries where the construction of coal gas pipelines and electricity networks were not economically viable. This, of course, was not the case in Britain.