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During World War I, when my laboratory was collaborating with the
U.S. Bureau of Mines in an effort to secure a better ( more nearly knock free ) aviation gasoline, Baekeland was in touch
with the endeavor in his capacity as a member of the Naval Consulting Board. When, after an extensive program of engine tests
of hydrocarbons of various types, our men proposed to manufacturecyclohexane as the basis of a better airplane fuel, Baekeland
advised against the attempt, as he thought it impractical. To emphasize his belief, he offered to give the group a wooden
medal if they could make a pint of cyclohexane.
The effort to produce cyclohexane by the catalytic hydrogenation of benzene was undertaken nevertheless.
And, after an intensive research, the effort turned out to be much more feasible and successful than Baekeland, or we ourselves
had thought. And so, knowing that Baekeland's sportsmanship resided on a high plane, we ceremoniously presented to him from
the first batch of cyclohexane produced a litre bottle of it in a plush-lined mahogany box. Along with the sample of
cyclohexane, we gave him a suggested design, implying CATalysis, for the wooden medal he had promised to present the group.
The outcome was so pleasing to Baekeland that that bottle of cyclohexane became one of his prized possessions, and he kept
it on his desk for a long time afterwards. That he should have been so pleased when a prediction of his turned out to
be wrong was because his long experience in industrial chemistry and consultation work had taqght him, as he once expressed
it, " to bow humbly before the facts, even if they did not seem to agree with my favourite theories." All his own successes
in research, Baekeland said also, had had their origin in divergences between facts observed in experiment and currently accepted
theory.
LEGACY...
Leo Hendrik Baekeland came to the end of his long, eventful, and highly useful life on February
23, 1944, at the age of eighty. As a boy he had wanted to follow the sea. But, when he chanced to hear a lecture
in chemistry, the subject fascinated him so greatly that his search for adventure was shifted into that field instead.
And, fortunately, the field of chemistry turned out to be one full of high adventure for him. It was fortunate also that,
by virtue of Baekeland's distinctive genius and his hard work, his explorations there yielded discoveries of the highest importance
to the world.....
The End
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IT'S BAKELITE YOU KNOW !!!! ( WWW.BAKELITEMAN.COM )
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