Overview
- 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
Part of the book series: SpringerBriefs in Molecular Science (BRIEFSMOLECULAR)
Part of the book sub series: History of Chemistry (BRIESFHISTCHEM)
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Table of contents (10 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
This book constructs a history of 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, the production of reagent chemicals and refined materials near the center of modern-day New York City grew steadily, as practitioners, alert to European advances in chemical science, developed and applied increasingly sophisticated technologies. Innovations in methods of production, ready access to domestic and international markets, and sustained growth in volumes of production at Newtown Creek in the late 19th century had profound consequences 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 crude petroleum and the production of high-purity copper and other 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 thrived along Newtown Creek’s shores. The author recounts Newtown Creek’s industrial 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 provides a valuable account of New York’s history in the manufacture of reagent chemicals and refined fuels and metals and will appeal to researchers, scholars and historians interested in the early years of industrial chemistry.
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
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.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Chemical and Petroleum Industries at Newtown Creek
Book Subtitle: History and Technology
Authors: Peter Spellane
Series Title: SpringerBriefs in Molecular Science
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09629-7
Publisher: Springer Cham
eBook Packages: Chemistry and Materials Science, Chemistry and Material Science (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-031-09628-0Published: 15 September 2022
eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-09629-7Published: 14 September 2022
Series ISSN: 2191-5407
Series E-ISSN: 2191-5415
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XV, 110
Number of Illustrations: 7 b/w illustrations, 14 illustrations in colour
Topics: History of Chemistry, Industrial Chemistry/Chemical Engineering, History of Science