this process instead of water which is the by-product in the case of
formaldehyde. The product is similar to bakelite, exactly how similar is
a question that the courts will have to decide. The inventors threatened
to call it Phenyl-endeka-saligeno-saligenin, but, rightly fearing that
this would interfere with its salability, they have named it "redmanol."

A phenolic condensation product closely related to bakelite and redmanol
is condensite, the invention of Jonas Walter Aylesworth. Aylesworth was
trained in what he referred to as "the greatest university of the world,
the Edison laboratory." He entered this university at the age of
nineteen at a salary of $3 a week, but Edison soon found that he had in
his new boy an assistant who could stand being shut up in the laboratory
working day and night as long as he could. After nine years of close
association with Edison he set up a little laboratory in his own back
yard to work out new plastics. He found that by acting on
naphthalene--the moth-ball stuff--with chlorine he got a series of
useful products called "halowaxes." The lower chlorinated products are
oils, which may be used for impregnating paper or soft wood, making it
non-inflammable and impregnable to water. If four atoms of chlorine
enter the naphthalene molecule the product is a hard wax that rings like
a metal.

Condensite is anhydrous and infusible, and like its rivals finds its
chief employment in the insulation parts of electrical apparatus. The
records of the Edison phonograph are made of it. So are the buttons of
our blue-jackets. The Government at the outbreak of the war ordered
40,000 goggles in condensite frames to protect the eyes of our gunners
from the glare and acid fumes.

The various synthetics played an important part in the war. According to