Chemistry Reference
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rise of a visual culture during the second half of the nineteenth century
was in my view, next to the expansion of the industry itself, one of the
major causes of the increasing role of chemical technology and chemical
industry in popular books on chemistry.
In the twentieth century the emphasis on technical chemistry would
continue to play a decisive role, not in the last place because of the then
emerging direct involvement of chemical corporations in the populariza-
tion of chemistry. In contrast to the years 1865-1899, in which in the
Netherlands all popular chemistry books had a technological outlook, af-
ter 1900 new styles of popular chemistry books would (re)emerge: books
completely devoted to simple experiments that boys could perform at
home, in order to prepare their minds (and hands) for becoming a chem-
ists; and books on new developments, such as new theories of atoms and
molecules, the world of radioactive rays, and the discoveries in biochem-
istry, which also resulted partly from attempts to enhance the recruitment
into chemistry. Yet these books on chemical science and chemical ex-
perimentation were outnumbered - at least in the Netherlands, and prob-
ably elsewhere as well - by books in which the chemical industry was
treated in a popular way. Starting approximately in 1865, the populariza-
tion of chemistry and the promotion of the chemical industry became so
strongly entwined that one cannot blame the general public for not al-
ways being capable of keeping the two apart. In my view, the long last-
ing emphasis in popular chemistry books on utility, technology, and in-
dustry has made the science of chemistry particularly vulnerable with
respect to criticism of social, political, and environmental behavior of the
chemical industry.
When in August 1965 several worried public relations officers from
the Dutch chemical industry gathered in The Hague to consider the dete-
riorated public image of chemistry, their concern was not without prece-
dent. Perhaps without realizing it, they tackled an issue the historical
foundation of which was put in place a full century before. As we all
know now, the results of their publicity campaigns have been rather fu-
tile, or even counter-productive. In Eibert Bunte's Leven met chemie
('Living with Chemistry') of 1968, the old story of the utility and neces-
sity of chemistry was repeated for the umpteenth time. Not much later
student numbers in chemistry started to drop dramatically, and they have
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