This book reconstructs Newtown Creek's industrial expansion during the period that began in the 1840s and continued through the early years of the 20th century: in that period, production of reagent chemicals and materials grew as practitioners, alert to advances in chemical science, developed and applied increasingly sophisticated production technologies. Advances in methods of production and growth in volume of materials produced along Newtown Creek in the second half of the 19th century had profound consequence for the practice of industrial chemistry in the United States and for the economic vitality of the City of New York. Industrial practice progressed from the recovery of animal tissues to the refining of petroleum and production of high-purity metals from mineral ores. With attention to each company's technical expertise and principal products, this book examines the interdependence of the chemicals- and materials-producing industries that took root and thrived along Newtown Creek's industrial shores. The author also traces Newtown Creek's history alongside the stories of well-known New Yorkers Peter Cooper, Charles Pratt, John D. and William Rockefeller and other less celebrated or less notorious characters. This book is a valuable account for New York's history in manufacture of chemicals and refining of petroleum, and will appeal to researchers, scholars and historians interested in chemical and refining technologies that took form at Newton Creek.

Traces Newtown Creek's history of chemicals manufacture Outlines the input of well-known and less notorious New Yorkers in chemical industry Broadens the understanding of the industrial chemistry practice in the United States

Autorentext

Peter Spellane is a member of the chemistry faculty at New York City College of Technology, a campus of the City University of New York (CUNY) and an adjunct member of the faculty at the CUNY Graduate Center. Before joining CUNY, he had done postdoctoral work at the IBM T. J. Watson Laboratory and had worked as a research chemist at Akzo Nobel Chemicals in Dobbs Ferry, New York and in Arnhem, the Netherlands.

Inhalt

Newtown Creek and New York City.- Skin and Bones.- Oil of Vitriol: Martin Kalbfleisch and the Manufacture of Reagent Chemicals at Newtown Creek.- Superphosphate.- Abraham Gesner and the New York Kerosene Oil Company.- Benjamin Silliman, Jr., and the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company.- Charles Pratt, Henry Rogers, and Astral Oil.- Acid and copper: The 50-year Partnership of John Brown Francis Herreshoff and William Nichols.- The Standard Oil Company and New York City.- Industry, Invention, and the Americans; Newtown Creek, then and Now.