Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
that “could be made so cheaply it would be thrown away instead of being
sent to the laundry”.
Both the articles and photograph captions frequently referenced wiz-
ardry and alchemy: chemists were spinning cloth out of coal, and wool
out of “mechanized sheep” or buckets of milk; they were “turning wood
chips into the finest of fibers and fabrics” and making nylon “from coal,
air and water”. Figures 3, 4, and 5 show three of twenty-four photo-
graphs sold with the articles, some of them taken by the Science Service
photographer but others (as was standard practice) obtained from indus-
try sources and supplied with new captions.
Figure 3. Steps in making rayon, a photograph by Fremont Davis which was supplied
with the Science Service 'Fabrics for the Future' newspaper series, 1939. The suggested
caption read “Eight different chemical steps go into the making of acetate rayon in turn-
ing raw wood chips into the finest of fibers and fabrics.” (SIA RU7091, Box 408, Folder
23). Courtesy of Smithsonian Institution Archives.
As with so much of popular science of the 1930s, the articles assured
readers a future of endless progress; they promised more science to
come, with little attention to the consequences (LaFollette 1990, ch. 10).
Potter suggested that the “great advances of the past” were “only a small
part of what will appear in the future.” “Still stronger” or “potent” pro-
