Pathways to progress: The Great Lakes; Chemistry creates progress

Through the facilities of this station and the National Association of educational broadcasters Michigan State College presents to progress. By means of a grant for adult education an independent organization established by the Ford Foundation radio station WKRN by recording brings you to the Great Lakes pathways to progress. The Great Lakes region composed by the

labors of millions of people working together are divers of business activity. The beauty of nature and the promising future. Of the Great Lakes region. As a way to progress. But Great Lakes region of America industrial heart of a continent. Well in place of the gigantic factories and foundries region the biome and steel the region of great ships sailing the Great Lakes region and find fertile farmland forests lakes and mineral

homeland of five million people sprinkled with the strong points of American industry in this region. The petroleum cracking funnel trail of the Lower Lakes steamer and Brian Banks brutha industry is aiming to get. The medicine makers turn out huge quantities of healing potions. As a chemist with a test continually for better products and new uses for the products of the great laboratories and great chemical factories do the heavy work designed by the wizards of science in the Great Lakes region where chemistry progresses. Chemistry is works and wonders are everywhere in our daily lives.

In the realm of a sport shirt in the colors of the spectrum in the bleached eternal there's a gleaming white chemistry tightens the leather in your shoes and makes the plastic comb. It produces your facial creams and your shaving lotions. Chemistry is at work for us and countless invisible ways every minute of our modern lives manufacturing self-direct acid making fertilizers more refining petroleum for pickling steel but dyeing and finishing textiles and you factoring caustic soda making Ray on my sore eyes and cotton paint pigments manufacturing chlorine treating drinking water to make it safe but bleaching wood pulp paper in text is cleaning fluids and disinfectant. What chemistry takes nitrogen from the air and derives ammonia but fertilizers were scouring plastic and resin production and metal hardening processes. All these jobs and hundreds more are performed by chemistry. A science of

miracles wrapped in collars and industry of magic conjuring an amazing list of products and materials a vital importance to our American way of life the chemical industry is busy throughout America but its greatest concentration isn't about running from the central Atlantic states of New York Pennsylvania and New Jersey to the western Great Lakes region. This industry is led by men of vision and imagination. Mr. Badger is here to see you now Mr. Baca Oh fine send him right in please. Good morning Mr. Blacker. Well hi Randy welcome home. Say how was the trip. Pretty good. Nice trip nice weather and caught up on my project notes on the way back. Good. So down Randi and tell me how things are shaping up. Well very good Mr. Barker considering all the detail it requires When is the board meeting next Thursday afternoon.

Can we be ready by then. We sure can. If you've laid the groundwork I have my boy I have I have talked with each of the directors and sounded out their viewpoints. I've told them all I could about the proposed location. Now it's up to you to back me up with those facts and figures. It's really very simple logic. Racing's new chemical plant that should be located in the Great Lakes area preferably near the southern central point of the region. First of all anyone can see it's close to the markets. We already have big customers in Chicago Detroit and Milwaukee and all the other Great Lakes manufacturing and marketing centers all within easy reach. At the same time it's still close to the east for low shipping cost of the markets there. Well-stated Randian you're right there are plenty of advantages in marketing and what's more the region is ideally located for other basic reasons we can't overlook. We would have the advantages of the best transportation the lakes themselves for cheap raw material transportation excellent networks of railroad facilities and highway connections for truck deliveries

anywhere in or out of the area. We can't lose them to school. Do you have a thorough analysis of the transportation picture. It's all right here in the briefcase Jeev facts figures estimates the whole works. And it looks good too. What about the resources file that ought to be Exhibit A Unless I miss my guess. It's terrific. The salt supply in the Great Lakes area is practically inexhaustible. Here's an example Ralph. Forty two percent of the nation's chlorine and caustic soda is produced in the Detroit Cleveland Akron district. The main reason extensive salt deposits right under their front doorsteps. What about limestone. Plenty and cold and sand and petroleum and cheap water power. And another thing this area has a highly developed agriculture. The dairy belt the Corn Belt the livestock markets the farms of the Midwest all around. That's a double barrel break for us. Ready availability of materials and a reciprocating market for

fertilizers insecticides and weed killer farm products dills pet products you know has still been giving you a hard time. But you know how hard it is to sell him on anything new or different. But that farm angle ought to do it. He's convinced that 99 percent of his dividends come from what we sell to the farmers. In that case he'll love this location for the new plant. Good. The board is sure to go along with favorable factors like that. Well I can tell you one thing. I've spent almost five months on this survey and it looks to me like the Great Lakes area really has everything we need. I was leery about this move myself at first. You know I'm all for it. Well you've done a good job Randy leave the file here with me I want to go over it thoroughly. Now in the mean time check with production sales research and finance and get a brief for each one. I want to know their attitudes on the proposition and I want them to be getting ready for action unless I'm mistaken. Grayson chemical company will be locating

that new plant before this year is over. Wonderful. There's one more thing I have to report. When I was sat around this is a personal report to you Chief the fishing out there is wonderful. The Great Lakes region leading industrial chemical area producing about 35 percent of the chemicals manufactured annually in the United States and most of the chemical products made in Canada castles of chemistry's over the entire length from Duluth Minnesota to Montreal on the St. Lawrence River in Upper Michigan would buy destructive distillation and charcoal wood alcohol and other chemicals at the big carbide works in the Great Lakes water powers that operate

in both the American and Canadian sides of the St. Clair and Detroit rivers. The chemical thriving on the banks of the shallow depression along the waterways connecting Lake Huron and Lake Erie home territory of 14 great chemical companies producing huge quantities of glycol plastics and caustic soda Coke products and many many more. Canadian concentration studying the other side of the chemical valley with oil refineries and petroleum plants making synthetic rubber carbon black fiberglass styrene at Chicago and along the lower Lake Michigan showing great cracking vines and chemical factories add their products to the lake region's total output. The spring continues to the chemical byproducts plants of eastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania. The region of New York state south of Lake Ontario including Buffalo and Syracuse and Rochester foetal capital of the world. And on the

great power and chemical center at Niagara Falls and eastward to the Great Lakes outlet to the sea the St. Lawrence River this vast chain of installations is the chemical industry and the people drawing its raw materials and strength from nature's store house of the famous inland seas. Chemistry. And chemistry strong medicine. Many of the largest drug manufacturers in the forefront of the battle against sickness and disease are located in the Great Lakes region. Indianapolis

Kalamazoo Chicago Detroit. What important drug producing cities before 19:00 these drug factories. Follow the lead of medical researchers. They've been quick to market newly perfected drug products at prices within the reach of those who need the medicines. But the experiments of course always come first. The men who devote themselves to the cause of medical advancement are at the pioneers acclaim. Men like Dr. Frederick G bending. A graduate of the University of Toronto who had been a physician in the Canadian Army during World War 1 when he first attempted to build a surgical practice in London Ontario after the war he met with a singular failure. And so he decided on a part time job as lecturer at the Western Ontario Medical School. Well Dr. Pierre did you know that we're going to have Dr. Banting working with us starting next week. Yeah I did hear something to that effect. Yes he's going to be a demonstrator and lecturer you know good fellow too. He has indeed been having a very tough time of it lately I

understand trying to get his practice going. Well Dr. Bennett was never really a brilliant student you know but he is a good physician was wounded in the hand during the war. He's a plotter of that fellow. He goes slowly step by step. And it seems like you'll never get anywhere. But he will he never gives up never. Dr. bandings pop time job was a great political runs not only for his life but for the annals of medicine and chemistry. He took that job seriously and made his preparations for each lecture carefully. Dr. London have you talked with Fred batting about his new idea on sugar sickness. Fred theory and sugar say yes he was reading up for a lecture on the importance of the pancreas and digesting food that he penned on Dr. banding to wade through all the literature on the pancreas even for one like. Yes but that's when he got the idea while reading this material you see. He says he believes cells in the islands of Langerhans near the

pancreas produce a substance he calls X. And that this substance makes it possible for the body to absorb sugar. This ex keeps people from succumbing to the sugar sickness. But what about those who do contract it. Fred's theory is that those who do suffer from diabetes have a lack of this substance X and hence cannot absorb the sugars from their food. Great Scott it sounds rather simple but I'll be right. Diabetes is practically always fatal you know. He could be right about that. DOCTOR Yeah doctor Banting needed band equipment. It went to see Professor JGR McLeod at the University of Toronto medical school. Yes yes come in. Well what is it. Yes. Professor McLeod What do you want. My name is bending Dr

Frederick Banting from Western Ontario Medical School Dr. band. And you wanted to see me. Yes professor. I need help and some research I'm doing search and research on what may I ask. I think I found the cause of sugar sickness sugar sickness. My doctor. Do you realize what just say you know I trust you didn't come in here to just me I'm a busy man and I have no no professor I'm not joking and I want to tell you about it. Dr. Banting Do you realize a great many brilliant research men have been trying for years to discover the cause and cure of diabetes. Working with the very best of equipment. Yes. While I know I need to quit you needed more than equipment. But Professor McLeod any possibility ought to be investigated. I'm not sure this is it. Well very good doctor.

I hear you now consider the actions of nature Professor McLeod finally gave Dr. Ben 10 for the experiments and the help of a medical student named Charles H best site granted for the experiments was a small and poorly equipped laboratory. In an odd corner of the Toronto University Medical Building bestand Banting started work on May 16 19 21 but their first experiments were failures. After two months of fruitless effort a little light began to dawn they discovered for example they could make some of the dogs a workable serum that cured the experimental dog suffering from induced diabetes whose pancreas had been removed injections of the serum revive the animal and restore the sugar content of his blood to normal levels. As long as the injections were continued the dog remained well.

But they soon ran out of serum and had to seek a more plentiful source. They found this sauce. Woods X work with human beings is just one way to find out. Banting and best injected the serum into their own bodies time and again to see if it would harm them. Then they were ready for the crucial test and Dr. bandings old college friend Joe Gilchrist was ready to Joe was dying of sugar diabetes and agreed to try substance X. The date February 11th 1922 Toronto Canada Dr. Banting injected X into Gilchrist's body and Charles Best began the series of tests to determine if the sugar content of Gilchrest blood was going down as they hoped. Two hours dragged by as the three men seemed suspended in time and space nothing happened. Panting became discouraged and departed from the sick room to catch a train for a visit to his parents home. But Gilchrist kept trying continued testing in only a short time after Dr. banning had lived.

Come here quickly Charlie something's happening. What is it Joe. What's wrong but nothing's wrong something's right Charlie. I feeling better I saw him clearing up. I would feel weak in the legs anymore. Do you hear me Charlie I don't feel weak in the legs anymore. It is easy Joe. Sit down. Let me take another test. The serum must be working. It is thank God Charlie your serum X is working. Get me to the telephone right away I want to call Fred bending spokes and have them tell him the news when he gets off the train and then I'm going home to supper. For a change. I'm hungry. Joe Gilchrist ate his best meal in months that evening. And then he took his two small cousins out for a walk after supper. Never forget it never. Everybody stared at me. There I was walking and grinning from ear to ear. Everybody we passed turned around and stared at me. It was as if I was walking on

air. I hadn't felt like that in five years. Many shots followed that had given Joe Gilchrist a new lease on life. Banting and best began treating diabetic veterans at the Christie Street Hospital returned soldiers and Joe Gilchrist later said of them and himself. We were martyrs are heroes. We all knew we were dying. When you're that way you'll try anything. But they didn't die not of sugar sickness anyhow. Sugar sickness because insulin had been discovered. To doctor the patient plodder and the Professor McLeod who backed him and later joined in his research. The world recognition they richly deserve was awarded the Nobel Prize. Where the lab and the research doctors left all the medicine manufacturers

took up the fight. The Eli Lilly company of Indianapolis put insulin on the market and into the drug stores as soon as he learned of the discovery of insulin. So I placed the company's resources at the disposal of Dr. banding and Professor McLeod Well they ran short of insulin needed for clinical work supply and when the numerical drug was right a lily company was ready to manufacture insulin on a production basis. Diabetics will need insulin today. Get it for only one twentieth of the cost when it was first discovered. Double play from research laboratory at a pharmaceutical factory to a needful customer has been repeated many times in the history of chemistry in the Great Lakes. The greater health and happiness of mankind is a living tribute to both medical science and the chemical industry. Coal is black. Go to the chemists factory there.

You make as a fertilizer lamp black for paint and ink aromatic oils for perfumes and miracle drug sulfa parity for chemistry created the cold byproduct industry. All the valuable substances contained in cooking coal gas is wasted into the atmosphere first by products operated in this country where those of the Solvay process company at Syracuse New York in the early 1890s they produced ammonia for the company as ammonia and alkali operation. Then in 1894 the Cumbria steel company erected 60 although Hoffman ovens at Johnstown Pennsylvania and recovered Coke sulphate of ammonia and tar all the steel companies followed suit and by products Evans appeared at Buffalo and Joliet and soon the other major steel shutters which are today the coking centers as well. In this way the iron Colossus fostered the cold by products industry in his own backyard. The Great Lakes region.

With World War One came the most frenzied chemical activity ever seen in the United States of America products imported from Germany where the need grew critical as supplies of medicine and dyes dwindled. European allies were begging quantities of explosives and so America had to produce and had been sent shortly before the war through Pittsburgh. There Dr. copper's inventor of the coppers the well-known banker Andrew Mellon Dr Copper is in a position to help you a great deal financially by banking connections were able to meet or set up and finance your product operation as they properly should be used to make needed money. Big Vision is big money for backing.

Right now here's my proposition. Form a company to build byproduct on an extensive scale. More than you could ever undertake to build yourself. I'll give you a three hundred thousand dollars in stock to pay for your patents and your plants and I'll pay you a salary of ten thousand dollars a year for your work. How does that sound. The coppers is sounding good to me Mr. Matt. You know I have almost 300 of them. You mean more yeah yeah. I was more coppers the country will need thousands more when the European supplies cut off completely by the war. How about a Dr. copper is that a deal. All right you know he's good Mr. Mehta. We would make the deal. Andrew Mellon reorganize the copper's company and laid the groundwork for the vast American production of chemicals by Coke by products methods for World War 1.

The industry multiplied output many times over brewing the tonics to feed a war machine like of which the world had never seen before and hoped never to see again. When the war in the government found itself with a huge surplus for no made from benzene some thought it could never be Bacolod was already leaving off the age of plastics and calling for huge quantities of the know and formaldehyde. Another young industry needed all of new plastic material it could get to make radios phrase give me what we got today. When you get. Radio. And. The radio changed overnight from a novelty to a household necessity within 20 years the supply of Finola been used up the demand for more was growing every day and the plastic Sage was off to a running

start. The chemical industry has been served by a man a brilliant man of the Great Lakes region. None of the Laboratory of the chemical plants men of vision who have added their finest efforts to the song of life in this region and the nation as well. And like Captain J.B. Ford who established the Michigan company which is now the great one chemical company. Unlike Herbert H founder of the Dow Chemical Company at Midland Michigan and his son in law Dr. William J Hale one of the pioneers in the field of Kemah that can make something from almost anything. And the Huntington hooker who built the hooker electrochemical company's first plant at Niagara Falls New York where he found plenty of electrical power and plenty of salt available for the electrolytic manufacture of chlorine gas and caustic soda. And like William M. Burton of Cleveland the chemist who developed the first large scale control cracking process

for petroleum transforming the hydrocarbons into auto gasoline with Ethyl plastics oil insecticides and dyes. These men are only a few of the many who have contributed to the development of the chemical industry in the Great Lakes. The chemistry part of the song of the Great Lakes the medicine factories and the clinking bottles of the drugstore pharmacy healing powers protecting the help of millions of people whose lives enrich this name with a stronger longer human harmonies. Chemistry is a combination wizard and guide on the roads of progress. It removes the obstacles that opens new doors it reveals vast new horizons adds new riches and new wealth to a land already rich and wealthy. Chemistry is big and strong in the Great Lakes region. Here it finds abundant raw materials like salt and wood and coal and metals. Here it finds on limited turn the mixers charge the

brine tanks heat the brew move the wheels. Here it invests knowledge and experience in the laboratories of great universities and factories that in turn has more knowledge more experience more know how and here the chemical industry lives close to its customers close to the big markets where the products of the chemical plants reach the people. The Great Lakes region is the scene and the giants of chemistry are the actors. Together they stage a spectacle of modern magic chemistry create progress. The listener will hear that music played in the natures and the theatre inspiring in its vitality and blending every note every voice into an unending modulation into the promise of the cadences rising. Tempo changes in many ways at many times but has

returned and continue whatever. The right place. You have just heard pathways to progress a series of programmes devoted to the Great Lakes and the people who have made this region such an outstanding area. Pathways to progress is written by Alec wire directed by Dave original music was composed and directed by Knorr main Kimmel Tom wavier is heard as the voice of the Great Lakes. This program was recorded in the studios of W.K. are on the Michigan State College campus and is presented by means of a grant from the fund for adult education an independent

organization established by the Ford Foundation. This is the end of the network.