Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 60, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 March 1911 — CONQUERING THE AIR. [ARTICLE]

CONQUERING THE AIR.

The Chemist Is In the Battle ae Weil as the Aviator. The conouest of the air is being made by the chemist as well as by the aeronaut The advantage is with the chemist, who not only supplies the aeronaut with needful things, such as the bag and the gas, the frame of the heavier than air machine, the motor and the gasoline, but vpith remarkable results has also made an independent study of the air. It is pleasant to have our theories verified. When air was liquefied and solidified, as the theory of heat predicted it would be, there was Intense satisfaction in scientific circles. The first great expectations of what liquid air might do were hot realized, but Important uses for It are being found. Since its constituents have different boiling points they can be separated from one another by the same methods of distillation that are employed to separate alcohol from water. Thus 19 obtained nitrogen, from which is manufactured a fertilizer essential to the growth of wheat, known as nitrolime or calcium cyannmide. This Is prepared by passing nitrogen over redhot calcium carbide. The oxygen separated in the distillation process is not wasted, but Is used, for instance, in the oxyaoetylene blowpipe, the flame temperature of which is nearly equal to that of the electric arc. The blowpipe is employed to make large rubies by melting small ones together, to weld iron and steel, to cut steel beams any desired length and to cut portholes in the sides of battleships and to do the latter so rapidly as to displace the older mechanical methods.