Carl Duisberg, of
the Elberfeld factory, delivered an address on the latest achievements
of the chemical industry before the Eighth--and the last for a long
time--International Congress of Applied Chemistry. Duisberg insisted
upon talking in German, although more of his auditors would have
understood him in English. He laid full emphasis upon German
achievements and cast doubt upon the claim of "the Englishman Tilden" to
have prepared artificial rubber in the eighties. Perkin, of Manchester,
confronted him with his new process for making rubber from potatoes, but
Duisberg countered by proudly displaying two automobile tires made of
synthetic rubber with which he had made a thousand-mile run.
The intense antagonism between the British and German chemists at this
congress was felt by all present, but we did not foresee that in two
years from that date they would be engaged in manufacturing poison gas
to fire at one another. It was, however, realized that more was at stake
than personal reputation and national prestige.
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