The

1
Origins of Chemical
Engineering
F. J. VAN ANTWERPEN
16 Sun Road, West Millington, NJ 07946

Chemical Engineering, born and nurtured in the United

States and recognized as a distinct branch
of engineering,
has had a long, branched road of
development.
Thi his-
tory on its origins traces the birth of the discipline, being
especially concerned with why and how it evolved in the
United States and not in Europe where all of the technical
building blocks also eristed. The article deals
the emergence of the chemical engineering concept and the
mostly with
author only broadly describes later periods of growth and
change; no attempt is made to trace the conceptual origins
of the later periods.

Any talk on the history of a dynamic subject such as chemical engi-

A neering must trace concepts. And how dificult that is to
do. The chronicling of chemical processes and their variations and
changes, or of chemical equipment, with its myriad new designs, is easier
by tar, except when we try to isolate and inspect the why and who.
In tracing the origins of ideas the illuminative insights are usually not
simple to reconstruct. One cannot, like anthropologists, hope to find the
one origin of man, or decide as the ornithologists have that the reptile is
the forerunner of the bird, or, for that matter, have a choice of even two
beginnings akin to the physicists who are now uncertain whether every-
thing was started by Cod or a big bang-and aren t really comfortable
with the thought that they might be one. Chemical engineering then
(wherever you choose to put the then) and chemical engineering now had
many, many origins and chemical engineering of the future will trace
itself back to concepts we do not foresee now. So a first caveat-this
talk on origins of chemical engineering is not an attempt to do more than
make a few historical comments on a few things which led to present-day
chemical engineering. The second caveat-I will not attempt to de-
scribe our history in terms of processes or equipment. We should make

0-8412-0512-4/80/33-190-001 $05.00/1
1980 American Chemical Society

Furter; History of Chemical Engineering

Advances in Chemistry; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 1980
 HISTORY OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING
a few
distinctions; while chemical engineering is a
one time a collection of profession, it is at any
facts, assumptions, and design
tion is continuously art. The collec-
changing-just as our minds
impressions of fact and truth change, so chemicalchange-and just as our
Granted chemical processes and the chemical engineering changes.
in which chemical process industries are areas
engineering is used, but they are not per se chemical
engineering. Process equipment, while subject to the careful
of chemical attention
engineers, is not chemical engineering. This may
obvious and redundant; but while it is easier to seem
point to a process or an
evaporator which has benefited from chemical engineering, indeed
owe its existence as an economic may
not justified to look on them as
entity to chemical engineering, one is
anything more than the artifacts of our
artifice. Consider the relative ease of
tracing. the evolution of mech
anical things. I have used this illustration before in a talk
celebrate Olaf Hougen's 85th birthday. (1) I gave to

"Ifone asks
generally how Bell invented the telephone
most individuals would assume its complete origin was in his
mind, and that al that was needed was a fortuitous accident
with acid and a call for help to Mr. Watson. Bell had
good
examples to inspire him; the telegraph was well established;
the multiple
telegraph, a scheme to allow several telegraph
messages to be sent simultaneously over a single wire, inter-
rupting tones of different frequencies, had been thought of;a
device, known as a manometric capsule, in which the voice
actuateda membrane to produce flame distortations existed;
and another device, via a voice-actuated membrane traced
(through a stylus) voice patterns ona pane of glass treated
with lamp black" (1).

So we know prior mechanical elements of the telephone. The point

I am trying to make is that it is far easier to trace the history of a finite
object than it is to track concepts. We have countless clocks and pre-
cursors; but who first thought of measuring time? Show me a monument
to his honor. Only through autobiography will we ever know who was
inspired to do what with what idea.
One other example. During the war a major achievement using
chemical engineering was the chemical plant which was used to separate
plutonium made in the Hanford pile.
Du Pont
agreed to design and build the separation plant even before
it was certain
a pile could be built
which would go critical and whether it
would make plutonium. Design was well
was produced in
underway before plutoniumn
any quantity. The problem in the
which was never met before, was remote separation plant,
handling of plutonium, remote
processing, remote control, and, greatly important, remote
illustrative and intriguing concept from this chemical repair. One
experience follows.

Furter; History of Chemical Engineering

Advances in Chemistry; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 1980.
1. VAN ANTWERPEN
The Origins of Chemical Engineeringg
3
Remote, overhead, shielded cranes
impact wrenches to disconnect radioactive could use delicately balanced
for burying. But how to equipment and could pull it up
guarantee that the
actly in place? The design engineers borrowedreplacement would it ex-
a concept from radio
designed equipment with bottom pins, just as on radio and
precisely into tubes, which fitted
designated slots.
wasn't though), but it serves to Perhaps
this strikes one as minor (it
illustrate my point about concept; only
through autobiography is it possible to trace concepts and how
used and reused. If Kekule had not told of his dream they are
about snakes, we
would not be
only poorer for lack of a charming insight, but we still would
be wondering how he ever
figured out the structure of benzene.
Who first had the idea of a chemical
engineer? We don't know.
mentioned in my history of the first 50 years of the American Institute of
Chemical Engineers (2), that the word chemical engineer
appeared in
1839 in a Dictionary of Arts, Manufacturers, and Mines, and that in 1879
the words were used also on a published drawing. So the idea of an
engineer associated chemical processes existed quite early, in fact
with
only twenty-one years after the formation in Engand of the first engi-
neering society, the Institute of Civil Engineers, founded in 1818 with
culminating organization efforts going back to 1771. A few other dates to
put everything in perspective:

1608: First chemicals exported from the New World

1747: The French founded the first Civil Engineering
School
1818: First Engineering Society, Civil Engineering, in
Britain
1836: Civil Engineers try to organize in the United States
1843: National Engineering Society formed in Holland
1 1847: National Engineering Society formed in Belgium and
Germany
ngineering Society formed in France
1848: National
1848: Boston Civil Engineering Society (BSCE) formed
(lasted until merged with ASCE in 1974)
1852: First National Engineering Society-the American
Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)-formed in the
United States.

The term engineer was not new: our Revolutionary Army had engi-
neering officers and a corps of engineers; in England John Smeaton in
1782 signed himself "Civil Engineer."
In his excellent paper (3) on the evolution of unit operations, W. K.
Lewis points out that Modern chemical industries started with the
Le Blanc process in France during the (French) Revolution" and that "the
expansion of the chemical industry during the nineteenth century was

Furter, History of Chemical Engineering

Advances in Chemistry; American Chemical Society:
Washington, DC, 1980.
e,7 55
1. VAN ANTWERPEN The Origins of Chemical Engineering
"The spirit of the Americans is adverse to
does not seek theoretical discoveries
general ideas; it
. the observation
applies to the mechanical arts. In America the inventions of
Europe are adapted with sagacity; they are perfected and
adapted with admirable skills to the wants of the country.
Manufacturers exist, but the science of manufacture is not
cultivated; and they have good workmen, but very few inven-
tions (4).
He warms up to this theme in Volume II in the section entitled "The
Example of the American Does Not Prove That a Democratic People Can
Have No Aptitude and No Taste for Science, Literature, or Art" (4) and
begins:
"It must be acknowledged that in few of the civilized
nations of our time have the high sciences made less progress
than in the United States."

That sounds worse than it is, for de Tocqueville credits it to an austere

religion, a new and abundant country, the spirit of gain, etc., etc.
However, he does credit us for something.
"In America the purely practical part of science is ad-
mirably understood, and careful attention is paid to the theo-
retical portion which is immediately requisite to application.
On this head the American always displays a clear, jree,
original, and inventive power of mind. But hardly anyone in
the United States devotes himself to the essentially theoretical
and abstract portions of human knowledge.
the higher
"Nothing is more necessary to the culture of
and nothing is less suited to
than meditation. .
science. . .
.

every-
meditation than the structure of democratic society
and others in
one is in motion sOme in quest of power
quest of gain (5)
Tocqueville-I must admit
Perhaps I have dwelt too long on de
fascination-but the analysis in 1831 still fts conditions during the devel-
opment of chemical engineering
50 to 60 years later. when
in chemical engineering was ofered at
M.I.T.
The first course

a Professor of Industrial Chemistry, Lewis Mill Norton, founded the now

This was in 1888, one year
famous Course X-Chemical Engineering.
it has preeminence, M.I.T.
after Davis Manchester lecture. Although
President of the Institution in his Decem-
did not claim invention. The
1l members "of the second-year
ber, 1888 report revealed that already
course" (6) (M.I.T. hada common
class have already entered upon the
and then he undertook to explain what
first year for engineering students)
it all was about.

Furter, History of Chemical Engineering

American Chemical Society: Washington, DC,
1980.
Advances in Chemistry;
 HISTORY OF CHEMICAL ENCINEERING

known in this
"The chemical engineer has been but little
at all, under that name;
country or England, and perhaps
not
although his profession is recognized in France and Germany.
The chemical engineer is not primarily a chemist, but a mech-
anical engineer. He is, however, a mechanical engineer who
has given special attention to the problems of the chemical
manufacture. There are a great number of industries which
require constructions, for specific chemical operations, which
can best be built, or can only be built, by engineers having a
knowledge of the chemical processes involved. This class of
industries is constantly increasing, both in number and in
importance. Heretofore, the required constructions have,
generally speaking, been designed, and work upon them has
been supervised and conducted, either by chemists, having an
inadequate knowledge of engineering principles and un-
familiar with engineering, or even building practice; or else by
engineers whose designs were certain to be either more labor-
i0us and expensive than wvas necessary or less efficient than
was desirable, because they did not thoroughly understand the
objects in view, having no familiarity, or little familiarity, with
the chemical conditions under which the processes of manu-
facture concerned must be carried on. It was to meet this
demand for engineers having a good knowledge of general and
applied chemistry, that the course in chemical engineering was
established.
"The instruction to be given, while following mainly in the
line of mechanical engineering, includes an extended study of
industrial chemistry, with laboratory practice.
tigations into fuels and draught, with reference toSpecial inves-
combustion,
will be a feature of the course. The
been fully marked out; but a
plan of study has not yet
standing committee of the
Faculty, consisting of the professors chiefly
give their attention, throughout the year, to concerned, will
the further de-
velopment of this department, which, it is believed, will add
much to the
strength and usefulness of the school (6).
One wonders if the
profession really was
Germany, or, are these words of justification forrecognized in France and
curriculum? yet another course in the
The twig was
definitely bent in the direction of mechanical engineer
ing, for in the M.I.T.
catalog for 1888-1889 the description for CourseX
was
"This course is
arranged to meet the
who desire a general training in mechanical needs of students
devote a portion of their time to the study ofengineering and to
the application of
chemistry to the arts,
which relate to the useespecially
to those
engineering problems
and manufacture of
(7). chemical products

Furter; History of Chemical Engineering

Advances in
Chemistry; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC 1980.
 1. VAN ANTWERPEN
The Origins of Chemical
Engineering
And later
The
general engineering studies in the course in
engineering coincide for the most part with the workchemical
of the
students in mechanical engineering" (7).

A look at the curriculum bears this out. Courses included Con-

struction of Gear Teeth, Mechanism of Mill Machinery, and Slide Valve
Link Motion, etc.
Chemistry was analytical: Elements of Organic Chemistry (Perkin
was only 32 years earlier), Industrial Chemistry-Lecture and Labora-
Chemistry
tory, Applied Chemistry, Thermochemistry, and Applied
which included a thesis.
indus-
Called chemical engineering then, it is recognizable today
as

was a combination of
the
trial chemistry and perhaps (note the perhaps)
with a mechanical engineer in
European techniques of a chemist workingdeference to W. K. Lewis' (8)
in
the design of a plant. The perhaps is
several conclusions in 1958 that:

"Davis, [in the] Manchester

Lectures thirty
years before
the essential concept of unit
the coining of the term, presented
an understanding of its value for
operations, and particularly credit for the initi-
be given full
educators; that Davis must that
the modern chemical engineering profession;
ation of the chemistry
between
Norton's curriculum was differentiating the
to that industry on
of an industry which is always specific com-
mechanical and physical operations
one hand, and the
to many industries on the other" (8).
mon

concludes that based on the M.I.T. catalogue

Further, Lewis
course:
description of a fourth year
materials,
"*Applied chemistry (which dealt) with
evaporation and distillation, etc.,
methodsof transportation, used in manu
devoted to a discussion of the appliances
etc.,
considered from an engineer
facturing and applied chemistry
t h i s was the first course
in unit
ing point of view in an organized curriculum in
ever incorporated
operations
chemical engineering'" (8).
Lewis
and conjecture of W. K.
One respect the opinion
must
the unit
McAdams were the first to expound
because he, Walker, and acceleration of
which gave the first distinctive
operations-that concept
industrial chemistry.
chemical engineering away from are
Myreasons for skepticism about Lewis sweeping conclusions
based on the opinion of others from the same era.

Furter; History of Chemical Engineering

1980.
Advances in Chemistry; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC,
 HISTORY OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING
A. H. White: "In the
spring of 1919 when Colonel William H.
Walker and I were still in Army
his Maine cottage in June with uniform,
he told me that he was
W. K. Lewis and W. H. going to
write text book on chemical
a McAdams and
C. M. A. Stine in 1928: engineering" (9).
"The chemical
recent product of our industrial engineer is a comparatively
find but little mention of development; a couple of decades ago we
him. When the American
Chemical Engineers Institute of
was
organized the conception
of chemical
ing was rather
hazy. What was realized engineer
engaged in industrial operations needed toactually was the fact that those
purely chemical research worker in order tosupplement the results of the
the manufacturer . . adapt these results to use by
"Perhaps the characteristics which differentiate the chemical
most
engineer of today (1928) from the
earlier activities
the field is the of those interested in
quantitative
it is this exact and
treatment of these various unit operations and
quantitative
constitutes the province of modern treatment of these
operations which
chemical engineering
A. D. Little in 1928
after describing Course X and its(10).
association with a "general beginning
"Even at that time and for training
in mechanical
engineering
many years afterward there was little
(11):
tinction between industrial dis-
chemical engineer was still a chemistry
and chemical
mechanical engineer who had
engineering. The
knowledge of chemistry" (11). acquired some
So I must conclude that an association of Davis and
with operations, later included in the concept called unit Norton et al.
not mean that
they had discovered them. These operation, did
new even at the
time of operations were not

the verbal brilliance of A.Hausbrand, Sorel, Norton, and Davis and it took
D. Little to bound the
pioneers would find pay dirt. country where our early
For the record, the first-the very first-person entitled to call
himself a chemical engineer by virtue of a degree was William
Page
Bryant, who, after graduating from M.I.T. in 1891, promptly entered the
insurance business and spent most of his life
Boston Board of Fire Underwriters.
as a rating auditor for the

individual with such

Apparently he was an outstanding
a
prodigious
memory that his fellow students in the
year book lauded him as: "W. P. Bryant, the intellectual giant, can repeat
word for word almost everything he ever
heard" (12).
Other universities in the United States soon entered the ield after
M.I.T. The second chemical
engineering program was otfered at the
University of Michigan in 1898. The first departments of Chemical
Engineering were started at the University of Pennsylvania in 1892,
Tulane University in 1894, the University of Wisconsin in 1898, and the
Armor Institute of Technology in 1900, where according to White "the
tirst laboratory work in chemical engineering was offered here in 1908

Furter; History of Chemical Engineering

Advances in Chemistry; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 1980.
 VAN ANTWERPEN
The Origins of Chemical
Engineering
and directed study to such unit operations
filtering, and as
evaporation, crystallization,
drying" (13).
Speculating still further
on why chemical
developed as it
did in the United States, do the remarks of C.engineering
M. A. Stine-eventually
Vice President of DuPont and President of AIChE-give a better clue
than de Tocqueville? Probably.
The formation of AIChE certainly helped. It was the
only such society in the world and it gave focus by chemica
engineers and for their publication" (14).

It enlisted the support of the great pioneers such as Little, White,

Walker, John Olsen, and McCormack Meade (editor of the publication
The Chemical Engineer) who apparently deserved special encomia such
as that give by John C. Olsen, first secretary of AIChE, when he wrote:

the origin of any human institution o r society invariably leads

to some outstanding personality whose initiative and
back and develop-
industry were responsible for its early growth Meade
that Richard K.
ment. In the case of the AIChE was

(11).
of
suspects that the arguments against forming society
a
Then too one
the ACS, Marston
chemical engineers, expressed by the then President of
and his insistence that chemical engineers and industrial
T. Bogert,
chemists were the same, gave the soon-to-be-hatched society a goal-to
it should be pointed out (I knew him: he
prove we are different. Bogert,
was a fine courtly gentleman of sincere concern for chemistry in all ot its
in
manifestations), tried to assure the founders of AIChE that he was not
any way opposing the formation of a society of chemical engineers.
The formation of AIChE, with its infant pledge to the future, organi
zationally congealed the dedicated protagonists of the profession in a
search first for identity, then for systems and applications which bore out
that identity and their claim to uniqueness.
And these new men insisting on the specificity of their calling-that
they were not industrial chemists, but rather were engineers-found
their way, slowly true, but they found it. And the industry profited.
A primary premise relating to the development of an engineering
discipline is that it is required by an established industry. The chemical-
process industries in the United States popularly are assumed to have
developed after the First World War. Up to that time Germany is
credited with being the preeminent chemical power. This is not so.
Many developments that we assume are modern were firmly established
by 1908, the year AIChE was founded. In that year the United States
began the first large-scale chlorination of water; William H. Walker

Furter; History of Chemical

Advances in Engineering
Chemistry; American Chemical Society:
Washington, DC, 1980.
10 HISTORY OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING

received the Nichols Medal for his work in chemical engineering. The
first ten years of the twentieth century saw other notable developments in
thechemical industry. J. B. F. Herreshoff developed the first American
sulfuric acid contact process in 1900; the Semet-Solvay Company made
pure benzene, toluene, and solvent naphtha from coke-oven gas; David
Wesson, one of the founders of AIChE, vacuum-deodorized cottonseed
oil; A. J. Rossi began the electrolytic manufacture of ferrotitanium at
Niagara Falls. The next year the first oil gusher was discovered; Mon-
santo Company was formed to manufacture saccharin; Diamond Alkali
was organized; and the beginnings of the artificial-silk, or rayon, industry
were underway. A year later the Hooker Electrochemical Company got
its start and J. V. N. Dorr
invented the mechanical classifier in 1904.
These werethe basic developments that later were to become
industries. Rubber accelerators were discovered by
huge
of Goodrich in 1906 and the
George Oenslager
cyanamide process for nitrogen fixation was
developed in 1905. That same year phenolformaldeyde plastic was de-
veloped by L. H. Baekeland, who later became President of AIChE. In
the year before the founding of the AIChE, the calcium
cyanamide
manufacturing process was begun at Niagara Falls; E. L. Oliver produced
the first continuous-vacuum filter; and the first kraft paper mill in North
America was operated at Quebec. All of this activity testifed to the
establishment of a huge chemical industry; as a matter of fact, the chemi-
cal production in dollars and tons in America in 1910 was greater than the
English and the German outputs combined, and it was against this
background that chemical engineers came on stage.
But while there was a
fourishing inorganic chemical industry, the
United States of America had little in the
revealed
organic field. World War I
dramatic fashion our dependence on
in
Gernmany for dyes, dye
intermediates, pharmaceuticals, and many other organic chemicals,
which were largely cut off
by a naval blockade. We were also dependent
on
foreign sources for supplies of nitrogen and potash for fertilizers.
There was no synthetic ammonia, Our fixed nitrogen came from Chilean
nitrate; a small amount of
atmospheric nitrogen was combined with
oxygen by the now-obsolete arc
the cyanamid process was process, and the fixation of nitrogen by
practiced
United States has a large chemical
on a small scale.
Even though the
industry by 1917, there were still no
high-pressure syntheses for making methanol and
rubber, and no high-octane gasoline. (n fact, ammonia,
octane
no synthetic
number hadn't
been conceived
yet.) The thermal cracking of
begun; there were no synthetic fibers, no hydrocarbons had just
organic plastics. synthetic detergents, and few
The first synthetic
ment of the Burton
indigo was produced in 1917. Until the develop
process for cracking
leum industry had been
confined to
hydrocarbons in 1913, the petro-
separating
from the erude the

Furter, History of Chemical

Advances in Chemistry; American Chemical Engineering
Society: Washington, DC, 1980.
1. VAN ANTWERPEN 11
The Origins of Chemical Engineering
Compounds that nature had put there. There was no petrochem
industry. Ethylene and acetylene, now produced in enormous quan
ties as important building blocks for many compounds, were then o

minor importance as raw materials for the chemical industry.

it is not too immodest to claim that the explosive develop
Perhaps the development
ment of eficient large-scale chemical plants had to await with its own
distinct engineering discipline
of chemical engineering as a
methods, literature, research, and practitioners.
Curricula
Development of Chemical Engineering
industries needed trained
multiplying process
In the meantime, the the origination of the first
happening in education since
What was M.I.T. curriculum
1888? In 1905 the
men.
c o u r s e in
chemical engineering more chemistry.
Professor W. H.
Walker to introduce
was reorganized by several stages of develop
has gone through
But chemical engineering arbitrary divisions based
detailed here are purely each of
ment. These periods made by Hougen (12). In
on the
comprehensive study but each
largely on a particular area,
there is a major emphasis The first
these periods a r e a of greater
insight.
shifted to another
emphasis gradualy
p e r i o d was:
largely
Industrial chemistry and descriptions,
1898-1915: industry.
used in
nonquantitative,
of processes
the applica-
concept, chiefly
1915-1925: The unit-operation and was the central
hold
tion of physics, took was expanded
educational theme. The concept
the AIChE
Committee on Educa-
in report by
a chairmanship
time under Little's
tion -at that after Little's pioneering
in 1922, s e v e n years to the President of
description of unit operations
stated:
M.I.T. The report

as a science,
as distinguished from the
"Chemical engineering in courses of that
aggregate
number of subjects comprised
and mechanical and civil
composite of chemistry
the basis of which is those
not a
name, is
but a science of itself, coordina-
in their proper sequence and
engineering,
unit operations which as conducted on the indus-
a chemical process
tion constitute grinding, extracting, roast
scale. These operations, as on,
trial
distilling, air-drying, separating, and so
ing, crystallizing, as
such nor of mechan-
are not the subject
matter of chemistry way
Their treatment is in the quantitative
ical engineering. the controlling
laws them and of the
with proper exposition of in them is the province of
materials and equipment concerned
engineering. lt is
this selective emphasis on the unit
chemical

Furter, History of Chemical Engineering

ae in Chemistry: American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 1980.
 ENGINEERING
HISTORY OF CHEMICAL
12

in their quantitative aspects

that dif-
operations themselves
ferentiates the chemical engineer from industrial chemistry,
and
with general processes pro-
which is concerned primarily
ducts" (16).
the ghost of a
In 1922 the chemical engineers still were interring
extract from W. K. Lewis'
haunting predecessor. Another significant of chemical
paper, quoted earlier, bears on
the historical development
engineering from:

1910 when there were only 869 chemical engineering

World War I
kinds.
students out of a total of 23,241 of all
precipitated a tremendous demand for graduates, reflected in a
students in 1920, afigure which
listing of 5,743 chemical engineering This expansion in
rose to a sharp peak of 7,054 in 1921-22.
student numbers resulted largely from establishment of cur-
ricula in schools all over the country. The policies of these
schools were molded by the educational ideals of Walker and
Little" (17).

The development of chemical engineering was the product of several

different forces: the need of an industry for specialized engineering
talent; the growth of curriculum through a definition of what to teach; and
a professional organization formed to promulgate, publicize, and maintain
standards-plus of course de Tocqueville's insight on the development
predilections of Americans as they strove to found an industrial comple.
The next periods of development in chemical engineering education
were as follows:

1925-1935: Unit operations were still the dominant theme,

but more emphasis was being put on material
and energy balances.
1935-1945: Applied thermodynamics and process control
assumed imortance, but the development does
not imply necessarily less emphasis on unit
operations
1945-1955: Applied chemical kinetics and process desig
came to the fore. Unit operations losing its
uniqueness as it was consolidated into other
concepts.
More and more emphasis placed on engineer
1955
ing science. Rather than emphasizing unit
operations, the present trend is to concentrate
on the basic engineering sciences; for example,
in place of the unit operations of fuid low,
heat transfer, distillation, absorption, drying,

Furter; History of Chemical Engineering

Advances in Chemistry; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 1980.
1. VAN ANTWERPEN The Origins of Chemical Engineering 13
and the like, one uses momentum and mass and
energy transfer
Looking back again over the years during which all of these changes
were taking place one realizes with a pang that these developments were
the results of insights by chemical
engineers building on the achieve
ments of other chemical engineers, and that
by and large, their contri
butions have been chronicled mostly in technical imagery and the human
qualities of these teachers, engineers and researchers are preserved as
impressions, lovingly retained, only in the minds of students and asso
ciates. We mostly need to organize more programs dedicated to those
who will be looked on in the year 2000 as ancients worthy of praise.
I have done a partial history on Olaf Hougen, who, with Watson,
caused the slow creeping away from unit operations as the dominant
theme in chemical engineering to the broad sophisticated exploratory
engineering it is today. What better way to end this inadequate, in-
complete history of origins than to repeat the words of Professor Hougen
at the end of his magnificent Bicentennial Lecture on Chemical En-
gineering History entitled, "Seven Decades of Chemical Engineering"
and published in January, 1977 by CEP "to urge each department of
chemical engineering to write its own historical record-for preservation
by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers."
We already have about 20 such histories on record; that leaves about
110 to go.
But let us go further and invite each company to do the same, for
much of the history and progress of our profession was made when theory
met hard practicality. We should be allowed to know what, who, and
mostly why.

Literature Cited

1. Van Antwerpen, F. J. "Hougen, Olaf Andreas, His Impact on Chemical

Engineering: A Retrospective," to be published.
2. Van Antwerpen, F. J.; Fourdrinier, Sylvia "Highlights ofthe First Fifty Years
of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers; AIChE: New York, 1958.
3. Lewis, W. K. AlChE Symp. Ser. 1959, 55 (26), 1,3.
4. de Tocqueville, Alexis "Democracy in America;" (Reeve, Bowen, Bradley
translation,) Vintage Books, Random House: New York, Vol. 1, p. 326.
5. Ibid., Vol. 2, pp. 36, 43.
6. Report of the President (MIT) for the Academic Year 1887-188."
7. "MIT Catalogue, 1888-1889
8. Lewis, W. K. "MIT Catalogue, 1888-1889," pp. 3, 5.
9. Van Antwerpen,
10. Stine,
F. J.; Fourdrinier, Sylvia "Mrd Catalogue, 1888-1889,p.56.
C. M. A. "Chemical Engineering in Modern Industry," AIChE Trans.
1928, 5.
11. Little, A. D. "Twenty-ive Years of Chemical Engineering Progress;" AIChE:
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12. Ferguson, J. Scott, personal communication.

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Advances in Chemistry, American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 1980.
14 HISTORY OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING

13. White, A. H. "Twenty-five Years of Chemical Engineering Progress;" AIChE:

New York, 1933.
14. Olsen, J. C. AIChE Trans. 1932, 28, 299.
15. Hougen, O. 1he Chemical Engineer 1965, 191.
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American Institute of Chemical Engineers 1922.
17. Lewis, W. K. "Report of the Committee of Chemical Engineering Education
of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers," 1972, p. 5.
RECEIVED May 7, 1979

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American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 1980.
Advances in Chemistry;