Science: Hardness & Heat

Many a proud father, hearing that his son is to be honored at Commencement for achievement in college, journeys thither to witness the salute. Last week Cinemactor Franchot Tone, hearing that his father was to be honored for achievement in science and industry, journeyed to Washington to attend a dinner of the Electrochemical Society. There he was joined by his brother Frank Jerome ("Jerry"), Carborundum Co. sales executive, onetime Cornell baseballer. There Franchot and Frank saw their father, Carborundum Co.'s President Frank Jerome Tone, 67 this week, receive $1,000 and the Edward Goodrich Acheson medal "for outstanding accomplishments in electrothermics." Well-to-do Mr. Tone said he would give the money back to the Society for any project the board approved.

Frank Jerome Tone and Edward Goodrich Acheson made emery wheels obsolescent. An impure oxide of aluminum, emery was used for grinding in the time of the Pharaohs, was still the best abrasive industry had until 1891. In that year Acheson, looking for an artificial abrasive, found on the tip of a carbon electrode a few bright specks of an unknown substance. This, he discovered, was hard enough to cut glass and, when applied with oil to a wheel, would cut the face of a diamond tool. Acheson called the stuff "carborundum," because he thought it was composed of corundum and carbon before it was analyzed as silicon carbide. The first crude furnace produced a quarter-pound of carborundum a day. which was sold to jewelers for $880 per Ib. Frank Tone, a good businessman as well as an able scientist, built up the company that today makes 16,000 tons of carborundum a year, sells it for 15¢ per Ib. His own inventions, of which he has patented more than 150, include silicon carbide electrodes for high-temperature electric furnaces and a commercial process for making pure metallic silicon. Mr. Tone plays bad golf, likes to hunt & fish in Canada, makes excellent flapjacks.

Other topics discussed by the electrochemists in Washington:

¶ Chemist W. M. Cohn of Berkeley, Calif, described the solar furnace invented in Germany which he uses for high-temperature work. It consists of a coelostat (flat mirror geared to follow the sun) which feeds the rays into a concave reflector whence they are sharply focused on the substance under treatment. Dr. Cohn uses the sun furnace to make a clear, yellowish, glassy lining for kilns out of zirconium oxide. A half-minute under the reflector melts the oxide at 4,850° F. Higher temperatures than this have been obtained in electric furnaces, but Dr. Cohn believes that the surface heat of the sun itself (about 11,000° F.) might be coaxed from the sun furnace by increasing the mirror size and cutting down heat losses.