but seizes upon other substances, particularly those having an
acquisitive nature like its own. Such a substance is carbolic acid
(phenol) which, as we all know, is used as a disinfectant like
formaldehyde because it, too, has the power of attacking decomposable
organic matter. Now Prof. Adolf von Baeyer discovered in 1872 that when
phenol and formaldehyde were brought into contact they seized upon one
another and formed a combine of unusual tenacity, that is, a resin. But
as I have said, chemists in those days were shy of resins. Kleeberg in
1891 tried to make something out of it and W.H. Story in 1895 went so
far as to name the product "resinite," but nothing came of it until 1909
when L.H. Baekeland undertook a serious and systematic study of this
reaction in New York. Baekeland was a Belgian chemist, born at Ghent in
1863 and professor at Bruges. While a student at Ghent he took up
photography as a hobby and began to work on the problem of doing away
with the dark-room by producing a printing paper that could be developed
under ordinary light. When he came over to America in 1889 he brought
his idea with him and four years later turned out "Velox," with which
doubtless the reader is familiar. Velox was never patented because, as
Dr. Baekeland explained in his speech of acceptance of the Perkin medal
from the chemists of America, lawsuits are too expensive. Manufacturers
seem to be coming generally to the opinion that a synthetic name
copyrighted as a trademark affords better protection than a patent.

Later Dr. Baekeland turned his attention to the phenol condensation
products, working gradually up from test tubes to ton vats according to
his motto: "Make your mistakes on a small scale and your profits on a
large scale." He found that when equal weights of phenol and
formaldehyde were mixed and warmed in the presence of an alkaline
catalytic agent the solution separated into two layers, the upper
aqueous and the lower a resinous precipitate. This resin was soft,