Ammonia is given off in
this process instead of water which is the by-product in the case of
formaldehyde. The product is similar to bakelite, exactly how similar is
a question that the courts will have to decide. The inventors threatened
to call it Phenyl-endeka-saligeno-saligenin, but, rightly fearing that
this would interfere with its salability, they have named it "redmanol."
A phenolic condensation product closely related to bakelite and redmanol
is condensite, the invention of Jonas Walter Aylesworth. Aylesworth was
trained in what he referred to as "the greatest university of the world,
the Edison laboratory." He entered this university at the age of
nineteen at a salary of $3 a week, but Edison soon found that he had in
his new boy an assistant who could stand being shut up in the laboratory
working day and night as long as he could. After nine years of close
association with Edison he set up a little laboratory in his own back
yard to work out new plastics. He found that by acting on
naphthalene--the moth-ball stuff--with chlorine he got a series of
useful products called "halowaxes.
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