Research Results For 'Alum'

ABC PROCESS

The ABC process was a process for making artificial manure, so named on account of its chief ingredients being alum, blood and clay.
Research ABC Process

ADULTERATION

Adulteration is a term not only applied in its proper sense to the fraudulent mixture of articles of commerce, food, drink, drugs, seeds, etc, with noxious or inferior ingredients, but also by magistrates and analysts to accidental impurity, and even in some cases to actual substitution.

The chief objects of adulteration are to increase the weight or volume of the article, to give a colour which either makes a good article more pleasing to the eye or else disguises an inferior one, to substitute a cheaper form of the article, or the same substance from which the strength has been extracted, or to give it a false strength.

Among the adulterations which were commonly practised around 1905 for the purpose of fraudulently increasing the weight or volume of an article are the following: Bread was adulterated with alum or sulphate of copper, which gives solidity to the gluten of damaged or inferior flour; with chalk or carbonate of soda to correct the acidity of such flour; and with boiled rice or potatoes, which enables the bread to carry more water, and thus to produce a larger number of loaves from a given quantity of flour. Wheat flour is adulterated with other inferior flours, as the flour from rice, bean, Indian-corn, potato, and with sulphate of lime, alum, etc. Milk was usually adulterated with water. The adulterations generally present in butter consisted of an undue proportion of salt and water, lard, tallow, and other fats; when of poor quality it was frequently coloured with a little annatto, and, at times, with the juice of carrots. Genuine butter should not contain less than 80 percent of butter-fat. Cheese was also coloured with annatto and other substances. Tea was adulterated chiefly in China with sand, iron-filings, chalk, gypsum, China clay, exhausted tea leaves, and the leaves of the sycamore, horse-chestnut, and plum, whilst colour and weight were added by black-lead, indigo, Prussian-blue (one of the deleterious ingredients used by the Chinese in converting the lowest qualities of black into green teas), gum, turmeric, soapstone, catechu, and other substances.

Coffee was mingled with chicory, roasted wheat, roasted beans, acorns, mangel-wurzel, rye-flour, and coloured with burned sugar and other materials. Chicory was adulterated with different flours, as rye, wheat, beans, etc, and coloured with ferruginous earths, burned sugar, Venetian red, etc. Cocoa and chocolate were mixed with the cheaper kinds of arrow-root, animal matter, corn, sago, tapioca, etc. Sugar was adulterated to some extent with flour. Tobacco was mixed with sugar and treacle, aloes, liquorice, oil, alum, etc, and such leaves as rhubarb, chicory, cabbage, burdock, coltsfoot, besides excess of salt and water. Snuffs were adulterated with carbonate of ammonia, glass, sand, colouring matter, etc.

Confections were adulterated with flour and sulphate of lime. Preserved vegetables were kept green and poisoned by salts of copper. The acridity of mustard is commonly reduced by flour, and the colour of the compound is improved by turmeric. Pepper was adulterated with linseed-meal, flour, mustard husks, etc. Colour was given to pickles by salts of copper, acetate of copper, etc. Ale was adulterated with common salt, Cocculus Indicus, grains of paradise, quassia, and other bitters, sulphate of iron, alum, etc. Porter and stout were mixed with sugar, treacle, salt, and an excess of water. Brandy was diluted with water, and burned sugar was added to improve the colour; sometimes bad whisky was flavoured and coloured so as to resemble brandy, and sold under its name.

Gin was mixed with excess of water, and flavouring matters of various kinds, with alum and tartar, were added. Rum was diluted with water, and the flavour and colour kept up by the addition of cayenne and burned sugar. For champagne gooseberry and other inferior wines were often substituted. Port was manufactured from red Cape and other inferior wines, the body, flavour, strength, and colour being produced by gum-dragon, the washings of brandy casks, and a preparation of German bilberries. Cheap brown sherry was mixed with Cape and other low-priced brandies, and was flavoured with the washings of brandy casks, sugar-candy, and bitter almonds. Pale sherries were produced by gypsum, by a process called plastering, which removes the natural acids as well as the colour of the wine. Other wines were adulterated with elderberry, logwood, Brazil-wood, cudbear, red beetroot, etc, for colour; with lime or carbonate of lime, carbonate of soda, carbonate of potash, and litharge, to correct acidity; with catechu, sloe-leaves, and oak-bark for astringency; with sulphate of lime and alum for removing colour; with cane-sugar for giving sweetness and body; with alcohol for fortifying; and with ether, especially acetic ether, for giving bouquet and flavour.

Medicines, such as jalap, opium, rhubarb, cinchona bark, scammony, aloes, sarsaparilla, squills, etc, were mixed with various foreign substances. Castor-oil has been adulterated with other oils; and inferior oils were often. mixed with cod-liver oil. Cantharides were often mixed with golden-beetle and also artificially-coloured glass.

The adulteration of seeds was largely practised also, the seed which forms the adulterant being of course of the most worthless kind that can be had. Thus turnip-seed was mixed with rape, wild mustard, or charlock, which are steamed and kiln-dried to destroy their vitality, so as to evade detection in the progress of growth; old and useless turnip-seed was also used fraudulently mixed with fresh seeds. Clover was also much mixed with plantain and mere weeds.

Acts against adulteration have been passed in various countries and at various times. In Britain there was a law against it as early as 1267.
Research Adulteration

DUTCH PINK

Dutch Pink is a bright yellow colour formerly used in distemper, for staining paper-hangings, and for other ordinary purposes. It is composed of chalk or whiting coloured with a decoction of birch leaves, French berries, and alum.
Research Dutch Pink

FUR-TRADE

The term fur is sometimes distinctively applied to hairy animal skins when prepared for being made into articles of dress, etc, while the name of peltry is given to them in an unprepared state or when merely dried. The animals chiefly sought after for the sake of their furs were the beaver, raccoon, musk-rat, squirrel, hare, rabbit, the chinchilla, bear (black, grey, and brown), otter, sea-otter, seal, wolf, wolverine or glutton, marten, ermine, lynx, coypou (nutria), polecat (fitch), opossum, fox, etc. All the preparation that skins require before being sent to the market is to make them perfectly dry, so as to prevent them from putrefying. This is done by exposing them to the heat of the sun or a fire. The small skins are sometimes previously steeped in a solution of alum. When stored in large quantities they must be carefully preserved from dampness, as well as from moths. The fur-dresser, on receiving the skins, first subjects them to a softening process. He next cleans them from loose pieces of the integument by scraping them with a metalblade. Finally, the fur is cleaned and combed, after which it is handed over to the cutter, who cuts the furs out into the various shapes required to make different articles.

In Europe the fur trade was fed chiefly by Russia, which yielded great quantities of furs, especially in the Asiatic portion of her dominions. Austria, Turkey, Scandinavia, etc, also yielded a certain quantity.

The fur trade of America has long been highly important, and several great trading companies were engaged in it, of which the Dutch East India Company was first. The French early took up the fur trade in Canada, and their chain of forts and trading posts at one time extended from Hudson's Bay to New Orleans. Quebec and Montreal were at first trading posts. In 1670 Charles II granted to Prince Rupert and others a charter empowering them to trade exclusively with the aborigines of the Hudson's Bay region. A company, then and after called the Hudson's Bay Company, was formed, which for a period of nearly two centuries possessed a monopoly of the fur trade in the vast tract of country known as the Hudson's Bay Territory. In the winter of 1783-1784 another company was formed at Montreal, called, the North-west fur Company, which disputed the right of the Hudson's Bay Company, and actively opposed it. After a long and bitter rivalry the two companies united in 1821, retaining the name of Hudson's Bay Company. The monopoly which had hitherto been enjoyed by the original company about Hudson's Bay was much extended; but in 1868 an act of parliament was passed to make provision for the surrender, upon certain terms, of all the territories belonging to the company, and for their incorporation with the Dominion of Canada. In 1869 the surrender was carried out, Canada paying 300,000 pounds to the company by way of compensation. The company still possessed large stretches of valuable land, and many houses, forts, and posts in the region formerly belonging to it. Its operations even extended beyond British America into the United States and to the Sandwich Islands and Alaska. It employed a large staff of agents, traders, Indian hunters, etc. Some of its posts were situated far north, almost approaching the Arctic Ocean.

In the United States, the fur-trade, especially that trade in beaver fur, was an important element in the economic life of all the colonies in the seventeenth century, and in the struggle between England and France for the possession of North America, also in all negotiations respecting the northwest boundary of the United States. In 1809 John Jacob Astor secured the incorporation of the American Fur Company. He founded Astoria in Oregon, and attempted to connect it with Mackinaw by a line of posts and consolidate the whole north-western fur-trade. After the War of 1812 he renewed his attempt. In 1816 the American Congress passed an act excluding foreign fur-traders.
Research Fur-Trade

GERANIUM

The Geranium (Crane's Bill) is an herbaceous plant of the family Geraniaceae, akin to the Wood Sorrel and Balsam. It takes its alternative name of Crane's Bill from the fancied resemblance of the fruit to the beak of a crane. They have usually palmately divided leaves and regular flowers with ten stamens and five carpels. Some thirteen species are wild in Britain, of which the Geranium robertianum or herb-robert is the most common. An American species, Geranium maculatum, from its astringency called 'alum-root,' is used medicinally as a gargle and otherwise. The so-called geraniums of our gardens belong to the genus Petargonium. Cultivation has produced many varieties, which from their beauty are great favourites.
Research Geranium

ASTRINGENT

An astringent is a substance which contracts tissues, chiefly by coagulating albumin. When applied in the form of lotions or ointments, they reduce the congestion of mucous membranes and thus assist in the healing of wounds and ulcers. The chief natural astringents are the mineral acids, alum, lime-water, chalk, salts of copper, zinc, iron, lead, silver; and among vegetables catechu, kino, oak-bark, and galls.
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ALUM

Alum is a crystalline, astringent substance with a sweetish taste. It is a double sulphate of potassium and aluminium with water of crystallization. It crystallizes in colourless regular octahedra. Its solution reddens vegetable blues. When heated, its water of crystallization is driven off, and it becomes light and spongy with slightly corrosive properties, and is used as a caustic under the name of burnt alum.

Alum is prepared in Great Britain at Whitby from alum-slate, where it forms the cliffs for miles, and at Hurlet and Campsie, near Glasgow, from bituminous alum shale and slate-clay, obtained from old coal-pits. It is also prepared near Rome from alum stone. Common alum is strictly potash alum; other two varieties are soda alum and ammonia alum, both similar in properties. Iron alum (pale mauve) and chrome alum (deep purple) are compounds containing iron and chromium in place of aluminium.

Alum is employed to harden tallow, to remove grease from printers' cushions and blocks in calico manufactories; in dyeing as a mordant. It is also largely used in the composition of crayons, in tannery, and in medicine (as an astringent and styptic). Wood and paper are dipped in a solution of alum to render them less combustible.
Research Alum

HELIOTYPE

Heliotype is a photographic process by which pictures can be printed in the same manner as lithographs, depending on the fact that a dried film of gelatine and bichromate of potash, when exposed to light, is afterwards insoluble in water, while the portion not so exposed swells when steeped. A mixture of gelatine, bichromate of potash, chrome alum, and water was poured on a plate of glass, where it shortly settled into a film. When dried the film contracted and separated from the glass. A picture was then printed on it from a negative, after which it was attached to a plate of zinc, and copies were taken from it by inking it with lithographic ink exactly as in the ordinary lithographic process. The films were technically called 'skins'. Sometimes a gutta-percha mould was prepared from the film, and copper deposited on it by the electrotype process, the plate thus produced being printed from in the ordinary way.
Research Heliotype

PICRIC ACID

Picric acid (Carbazoilic acid) or trinitro-phenol is a lemon yellow, crystalline acid, prepared by the action of nitric and sulphuric acids on phenol. It is used for dyeing silk goods after mordanting with alum. It is also used for imparting a bitter taste to beer, and as an explosive either in the form of the free acid or in one of its salts. Most of these explode violently on percussion or on detonation, and when consolidated by fusion, it is used as a high explosive for charging shells under the name lyddite. It yields explosive salts by the substitution of metals for the hydrogen of the hydroxyl group.
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ALUMINA

Alumina (Al2O3) is the single oxide of the metal aluminium. As found native it is called corundum, when crystallized ruby or sapphire, when amorphous emery. It is next to the diamond in hardness. In combination with silica it is one of the most widely distributed of substances, as it enters in large quantity into the composition of granite, traps, slates, schists, clays, loams, and other rocks. The porcelain clays and kaolins contain about half their weight of this earth, to which they owe their most valuable properties. It forms compounds with certain colouring matters, which causes it to be employed in the preparation of the colours called lakes in dyeing and calico-printing. It combines with the acids and forms numerous salts, the most important of which are the sulphate (Alum) and acetate, the latter of extensive use as a mordant.
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