Although chemicals were made and used throughout history, the birth of the heavy chemical industry (production of chemicals in large quantities for a variety of uses) coincided with the beginnings of the
Industrial Revolution.
Industrial Revolution One of the first chemicals to be produced in large amounts through industrial processes was
sulfuric acid. In 1736 pharmacist
Joshua Ward developed a process for its production that involved heating sulfur with saltpeter, allowing the sulfur to oxidize and combine with water. It was the first practical production of sulphuric acid on a large scale.
John Roebuck and
Samuel Garbett were the first to establish a large-scale factory in
Prestonpans, Scotland, in 1749, which used leaden condensing chambers for the manufacture of sulfuric acid. 's St. Rollox Chemical Works in 1831, then the biggest chemical enterprise in the world. In the early 18th century, cloth was bleached by treating it with stale
urine or
sour milk and exposing it to
sunlight for long periods of time, which created a severe bottleneck in production. Sulfuric acid began to be used as a more efficient agent as well as
lime by the middle of the century, but it was the discovery of
bleaching powder by
Charles Tennant that spurred the creation of the first great chemical industrial enterprise. His powder was made by reacting
chlorine with dry
slaked lime and proved to be a cheap and successful product. He opened the
St Rollox Chemical Works, north of
Glasgow, and production went from just 52 tons in 1799 to almost 10,000 tons just five years later.
Soda ash was used since ancient times in the production of
glass,
textile,
soap, and
paper, and the source of the
potash had traditionally been
wood ashes in
Western Europe. By the 18th century, this source was becoming uneconomical due to deforestation, and the
French Academy of Sciences offered a prize of 2400
livres for a method to produce alkali from sea salt (
sodium chloride). The
Leblanc process was patented in 1791 by
Nicolas Leblanc who then built a Leblanc plant at
Saint-Denis. He was denied his prize money because of the
French Revolution.
William Losh built the first soda works in Britain at the
Losh, Wilson and Bell works on the
River Tyne in 1816, but it remained on a small scale due to large
tariffs on salt production until 1824. When these tariffs were repealed, the British soda industry was able to rapidly expand.
James Muspratt's chemical works in
Liverpool and Charles Tennant's complex near
Glasgow became the largest chemical production centres anywhere. By the 1870s, the British soda output of 200,000 tons annually exceeded that of all other nations in the world combined. , patented an improved industrial method for the manufacture of
soda ash. These huge factories began to produce a greater diversity of chemicals as the
Industrial Revolution matured. Originally, large quantities of alkaline waste were vented into the environment from the production of soda, provoking one of the
first pieces of environmental legislation to be passed in 1863. This provided for close inspection of the factories and imposed heavy fines on those exceeding the limits on pollution. Methods were devised to make useful byproducts from the alkali. The
Solvay process was developed by the
Belgian industrial chemist
Ernest Solvay in 1861. In 1864, Solvay and his brother Alfred constructed a plant in
Charleroi Belgium. In 1874, they expanded into a larger plant in
Nancy, France. The new process proved more economical and less polluting than the Leblanc method, and its use spread. In the same year,
Ludwig Mond visited Solvay to acquire the rights to use his process, and he and
John Brunner formed
Brunner, Mond & Co., and built a Solvay plant at
Winnington, England. Mond was instrumental in making the Solvay process a commercial success. He made several refinements between 1873 and 1880 that removed byproducts that could inhibit the production of sodium carbonate in the process. The manufacture of chemical products from
fossil fuels began at scale in the early 19th century. The
coal tar and
ammoniacal liquor residues of
coal gas manufacture for
gas lighting began to be processed in 1822 at the
Bonnington Chemical Works in
Edinburgh to make
naphtha, pitch oil (later called
creosote),
pitch, lampblack (
carbon black) and sal ammoniac (
ammonium chloride).
Ammonium sulphate fertiliser,
asphalt road surfacing, coke oil and
coke were later added to the product line.
Expansion and maturation The late 19th century saw an explosion in both the quantity of production and the variety of chemicals that were manufactured. Large chemical industries arose in Germany and later in the United States. , in 1866. Production of artificial manufactured
fertilizer for
agriculture was pioneered by Sir
John Lawes at his purpose-built
Rothamsted Research facility. In the 1840s he established large works near
London for the manufacture of
superphosphate of lime. Processes for the
vulcanization of rubber were patented by
Charles Goodyear in the United States and
Thomas Hancock in England in the 1840s. The first synthetic dye was discovered by
William Henry Perkin in
London. He partly transformed
aniline into a crude mixture which, when extracted with alcohol, produced a substance with an intense purple colour. He also developed the first synthetic perfumes. German industry quickly began to dominate the field of synthetic dyes. The three major firms
BASF,
Bayer, and
Hoechst produced several hundred different dyes. By 1913, German industries produced almost 90% of the world's supply of dyestuffs and sold approximately 80% of their production abroad. In the United States,
Herbert Henry Dow's use of electrochemistry to produce chemicals from
brine was a commercial success that helped to promote the country's chemical industry. The development of synthetic dyes required laboratory discoveries to be translated into large-scale industrial processes, involving new technical skills and factory production systems. Sophisticated chemical plants arose during this time, reflecting the production methods of the Industrial Revolution. The synthetic dye industry is considered by historians to be among the first science-based industries, in which scientific research led directly to new commercial products. Chemical dye laboratories also served as the setting in which industrial research and development practices were first established in late 19th-century Germany. The
petrochemical industry can be traced back to the oil works of Scottish chemist
James Young, and Canadian
Abraham Pineo Gesner. The first plastic was invented by
Alexander Parkes, an English
metallurgist. In 1856, he patented
Parkesine, a
celluloid based on
nitrocellulose treated with a variety of solvents. This material, exhibited at the 1862 London International Exhibition, anticipated many of the modern aesthetic and utility uses of plastics. The industrial production of
soap from vegetable oils was started by
William Lever and his brother
James in 1885 in
Lancashire based on a modern chemical process invented by William Hough Watson that used
glycerin and
vegetable oils. By the 1920s, chemical firms consolidated into large
conglomerates;
IG Farben in Germany,
Rhône-Poulenc in France and
Imperial Chemical Industries in Britain.
Dupont became a major chemicals firm in the early 20th century in America. ==Products==