Excerpt from Chemical Discovery and Invention in the Twentieth CenturyIN selecting the subjects to be dealt with in the following pages I have been influenced by the reflection that the nature of the operations in which the chemist is engaged, the objects he has in view, the subjects and methods of study, and the uses to which his theories may be applied are still very little understood by the public. I am therefore in hopes that my readers may be assisted in forming new views about all these subjects, and any confusion existing in their minds concerning them may be cleared away. Considerable enlightenment may be hoped for from the fact that in nearly all the universities in the world at least one professor of chemistry is now to be found, while in most of the modern universities it is recognised that the subject extends over too wide a field to be efficiently cultivated by one man, and three main divisions are generally recognised, namely, inorganic, organic, and physical chemistry. To these are sometimes added departments of applied chemistry in which the relations of systematic chemistry to industry or manufacture, such as fuel, metallurgy, dyeing, and bleaching, etc., are studied. But the extension of knowledge from the universities to the mass of the people is still a Slow process, and notwithstanding the quicken ing effect which recent events have produced on the public mind, in England at any rate, it will be long before the practical economic importance of a knowledge of chemistry will be fully recognised by government departments, municipalities, and the public generally.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.