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. Wheatflour 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, Chinaclay, 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.
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 champagnegooseberry 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, cinchonabark, 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
Diachylon was a substance prepared by heating together lead oxide or litharge, olive-oil, and water, until the combination was complete, and replacing the water as it evaporates. It was formerly used for curing ulcers, and was the basis of many plasters around 1900. Research Diachylon
Cupellation is an ancient method of extracting silver from its ores by alloying the silver with lead, and then removing the lead from the lead-silver alloy by melting it in a receptacle made from bone-ash and called a cupel. Air is then passed over the surface of the metal, oxidising the lead to litharge which is blown off. Research Cupellation
A flux is a substance or mixture added to assist the fusion of minerals. In the large way, limestone and fluorite are used as fluxes. In the smelting of iron the flux must be such that it will combine with the earthy matter of the ore, and form a slag, which must neither be too refractory nor fusible. The fluxes made use of in assays or chemical experiments consist usually of alkalies and alkaline salts, as borax, potassium cyanide, potassium carbonate, sodium carbonate, common salt, which render the earthy mixtures fusible by converting them into glass. The fluxes used in pottery are various, but almost all consist of litharge or red-lead, borax, carbonates of potassium and sodium, and sand. In soldering, a flux is a substance used to keep the surfaces which have to be soldered together clean, by reducing any oxides which may form to the metallic state. Research Flux
Glass is an artificial hard, brittle, transparent or translucent, noncrystalline solid, consisting of metal silicates or similar compounds fused with an alkali. In its finest qualities glass is quite transparent, and is used for making windows, mirrors, bottles, composite armour plate for armoured fighting vehicles etc.
The ancient Egyptians carried the art of making glass to great perfection, and are known to have practised it as early as 2000 BC, if not earlier. The Assyrians, the Phoenicians, the Greeks and Etruscans were all acquainted with the manufacture. The Romans attained peculiar excellence in glass-making, and among them it was applied to a great variety of purposes. Among the most beautiful specimens of their art are the vases adorned with engraved figures in relief; they were sometimes transparent, sometimes of different colours on a dark ground, and very delicately executed. The Portland or Barberini vase is almost the only surviving specimen of this kind. The mode of preparing glass was known long before it was thought of making windows of it. The first mention of this mode of using glass is to be found in
Lactantius, in the 3rd century AD. St Jerome also speaks of glass being so used in 422 AD.
Benedict Biscop introduced glass windows into Britain in 674 AD. In church windows it was used from the 3rd century. The Venetians were long celebrated for their glass manufacture, which was established before 700 AD. Britain did not become distinguished for glass until about the commencement of the 16th century.
The excise laws relative to the glass manufacture were at one time complicated in the extreme, and tended to check improvements in glass-making. These laws were repealed in 1845 by Sir Robert Peel, as part of his free-trade policy, and beneficial effects were immediately apparent in the improved quality, cheapness, and greater variety of descriptions of glass produced. Traditionally, glass is largely made in France, Germany, Belgium, and the United States. For coloured glass Bohemia has long had a high reputation.
The first mention of the manufacture of glass in the United States is in Captain John Smith's 'History of Virginia', in which he speaks of a glass factory having been founded at Jamestown in 1615, and a second in 1622. The work was coarse, being chiefly confined to bottles. In 1754, a successful factory was established in Brooklyn by Bamper, a Dutchman. In 1779, factories were founded at Temple, New Hampshire, and in 1795 the industry was begun at Pittsburgh. By 1813 there were five glass factories at Pittsburgh. In 1840 there were eighty-one factories in the United States, by 1870, 201 factories flourished in different places and since then the industry rapidly increased.
Glass is formed by the fusion of siliceous matter, such as powdered flint or fine sand, together with some alkali, alkaline earth, salt, or metallic oxide. The nature of the glass will depend upon the quality and proportion of the ingredients of which it is formed; and thus an infinite variety of kinds of glass may be made, but in commerce five kinds are usually recognized:
1. Bottle or coarse green glass. 2. Broad, spread, or sheet window-glass. 3. Crown-glass, or the best window-glass. 4. Plate-glass, or glass of pure soda. 5. Flint-glass, or glass of lead.
Coloured glass may be mentioned as a sixth kind. The physical properties of glass are of the highest importance. Perhaps the chief of these is its transparency, and next to that its resistance to acids (except hydrofluoric acid). It preserves its transparency in a considerable heat, and its expansibility is less than that of any other known solid. Its great ductility, when heated, is also a remarkable property. It can, in this state, be drawn into all shapes, and even be spun into the finest threads. It is a bad conductor of heat, and is very brittle. It is usually cut by the diamond.
The works in which glass is made are called glass-houses. They were traditionally constructed of brick, and made of conical form. A large vault was made in the interior of the cone, extending from side to side, and of sufficient height to allow workmen to wheel in and out rubbish from beneath the furnace, which was placed over the vault, and separated from it by an iron grating. The materials used for the formation of the glass are sometimes calcined in a calcar or fritting furnace, and a chemical union between the ingredients commenced, forming a frit. But this process is not essential, and the materials, after being ground and thoroughly mixed up together, are usually placed at once in melting pots or crucibles made of Stourbridgefire-clay, or other similar material, the melting-pots being then placed in the melting furnace or oven. This is a kind of reverberatory furnace, traditionally circular in form, arched or domed above, and capable of keeping up an intense heat. The crucibles are placed in the furnace at equal distances from each other round the circumference, each pot being opposite to an opening in the wall of the furnace in order that the crucible may be charged or discharged by the workman from without. In the 19th century a furnace called a tankfurnace came into use which enabled melting pots to be dispensed with, as the material could be melted in and worked from the furnace directly.
The use of the annealingfurnace, is also essential in glass-making, the process of allowing the glass to cool there being called annealing. Unless this process be carefully managed, the articles formed in the glass-house can be of no use, from their liability to break by the slightest scratch or change of temperature.
Sheet glass is the commonest description of glass. It is composed of various ingredients in varying proportions, usually of sand, chalk, or limestone, sulphate of soda, and cullet or broken glass. A coarse variety of it may be made of a mixture of two parts by measure of soap-boilers' waste, one of soda-ash and one of cleaned sand. In France the materials employed are commonly: sand 100 parts, sulphate of soda 30, carbonate of lime 30, coke to aid in the reduction of the sulphate of soda 5, with some bioxide of manganese to correct the greenish tinge that glass with a soda base possesses. Traditionally when the materials were properly melted a quantity was taken out of the pot on the end of an iron tube about 5 feet long, and the workman by blowing into and swinging the tube while heating and reheating the glass, imparted a cylindrical shape to the newly-formed product. The rounded extremity of the cylinder (which was about 4 feet long or more) was softened in the furnace in order to enable the workman to blow a hole in it. This opening was made by heating the cylinder and then stopping up the tube with the thumb, when the expansion of the air caused the cylinder to burst open at the end. The other rounded end was detached after cooling by winding round its circumference a thread of red hot glass, which caused a clear fracture. The cylinder was then split open parallel to its axis by a diamond, and then conveyed to the flattening furnace where it was heated and opened out into a flat sheet of glass. It was afterwards placed in the annealingfurnace.
Crown glass is differently formed by different makers, but its composition is essentially the same as the best sheet glass. It used to be the only window-glass made in Britain, but its manufacture had been almost or altogether superseded by that of sheet glass by the start of the 20th century. The ingredients being melted and at the proper temperature, a quantity of the glass was withdrawn by the tube (to the amount, by successive addition, usually of 10 lbs in all). By various manipulations this from having the form of a hollow oblate spheroid was made to assume the form of a thin circular plate, with a thick part called the bull's eye in the centre, being the point at which an iron rod was attached to it for the purpose of causing it to revolve rapidly and spread out into a sheet before the furnace. The bull's eye used to be commonly seen in the windows of humble dwellings, the pieces of glass containing them being cheap.
Flint-glass or Crystal is one of the kinds largely made, being employed especially for table utensils, globes, ornaments, etc. Powdered flint was formerly employed in its manufacture, but fine white sand has been substituted. The other materials are red-lead or litharge, and pearl-ash (carbonate of potash). The following is said to be a good mixture : Fine white sand, 300 parts; red-lead or litharge, 200; refined pearl-ash, 86; nitre, 20; with a small quantity of arsenic and manganese. The furnace is kept at a very high temperature until the whole of the materials are fused. When the glass becomes translucent the temperature is diminished until it becomes a tenacious mass. Suppose a glass vessel is to be made, the iron tube is put into the crucible, and the required quantity of glass lifted out, which after certain adjustments is rolled into a cylindrical form on an iron table called the merver or marver. The workman
then blows the glass into the form of a hollow globe, and re-heats and blows until the globe becomes of the required thinness. An iron rod called the punty is now attached to the end of the glass furthest from the tube, and the tube detached. The workman now heats the glass on the punty, and sitting down upon a chair with smooth arms, he lays the punty upon them, and rolling it with his left hand he gives the glass a rotatory motion, while with an instrument in his right, somewhat like a pair of sugar-tongs, he enlarges or contracts the different parts of the vessel until it assumes the requisite shape. A pair of shear's is al.so made use of in certain cases. The article is then detached from the punty, and carried to the annealingfurnace. Many of the articles, after coming from the annealingfurnace, are sent to the cutter or grinder. The operation of grinding is performed by wheels of various diameter and of various edges, some of iron, others of stone, and some of wood. Rich and delicate designs may be cut upon the articles by means of small wheels of copper and steel upon which emery is kept constantly falling.
Ornamental figures may also be engraved, or rather etched, upon articles of glass by means of hydrofluoric acid, care being taken to place a coating of some substance over the parts not to be acted upon. Various ornamental forms are given to the surface of glass vessels by metallic moulds. The mould is usually of copper, with the figure cut on its inside, and opens with hinges to permit the glass to be taken out. The angles of moulded objects are always less sharp than those of cut-glass.
Green or bottle-glass is formed of the coarsest materials, such as coarse sea or river sand, lime, and clay, and the most inferior alkalies, as soap-boilers' waste, and the slag of iron ore. A cheap mixture for this kind of glass may be made of common sand and lime, with a little clay and sea salt. The manipulations of the traditional glass-blower in fashioning bottle-glass into various forms were in general the same as those performed by the flint-glass blower. Wine and beer bottles, which are required to be all of a certain capacity, are blown in moulds, so that their containing portion may be as nearly as possible of the requisite size. When the articles are made they are carried to the annealingfurnace. Green bottle-glass is preferable to all other kinds for vessels required to contain corrosive substances; it is less fusible than flint glass, and
thus is better calculated for many chemical purposes.
Plate-glass is a fine and thick glass cast in sheets. One maker's ingredients are as follows: white sand, 300 lbs; soda, 200; lime, 30; oxide of manganese, 2; oxide of cobalt, 3 ounces; and fragments of glass (cullet) equal to the weight of sand. After being melted in large crucibles, and the liquid glass having been thoroughly skimmed, it is transferred by a copper ladle to smaller pots (cuvettes). When the glass in the smaller crucible is ready for casting it is poured upon an iron casting-table, and a large metal cylinder moved along spreads the glass into a broad uniformsheet. The subsequent stages of the process are concerned with the discovery of flaws, the squaring of the edges, the grinding of the surfaces plane, the grinding of the sides, and the polishing. Before grinding and polishing the glass is what is called common 'rough plate,' and in this state it is much used for roofing, cellar-lighting, etc, being non-transparent. 'Rolled plate,' which is cast on a table that imparts a surface of grooves, flutings, lines, etc, is extensively used for the same purposes.
There are several other kinds of glass that may be noticed. Pressed glass is flint-glass formed into articles by pressing into moulds of iron or bronze, a fine surface being afterwards attained by heating so that a thin film on the surface melts.
Slag glass is glass from the slag of blast-furnaces mixed with other ingredients; it is largely used for bottles.
Optical glass is made of special varieties of flint and crown glass.
Strass, which was used for imitating gems, was a very dense flint-glass, colours being imparted by metallic oxides.
Spun glass is glass in the form of very fine threads, in which state it may be woven into textile fabrics of great beauty.
Toughened or hardened glass, having certain properties owing to its being heated to the melting point and plunged into an oleaginous mixture, was invented prior to the start of the 20th century, but was not developed into a working product until the mid-20th century, and is now very commonly used for windows.
Coloured glass is of two kinds - entirely coloured, the colouring matter being melted along with the other ingredients; or partially coloured, a quantity of white glass being gathered from one pot, and dipped into the other containing the coloured glass, by which the whole receives a skin of coloured glass. The colouring matters are chiefly the metallic oxides. A beautiful yellow colour is imparted by silver in union with alumina (powdered clay and chloride of silver being used), also by uranium and by glass of antimony; red colours by oxide of iron, copper, and gold; green by protoxide of iron, oxide of copper, oxide of chromium, &c.; blue by cobalt; orange by peroxide of iron with chloride of silver. ohemia is particularly famous for its manufactures of articles in coloured glass. Research Glass
Litharge is lead monoxide (PbO). It is a toxic red or yellow coloured substance prepared by oxidising lead in a current of air at a high enough temperature for the oxide to be melted as it forms. Litharge was used as a drier for paint and in the production of boil oil and terebine. Research Litharge
Litharge is a red lead oxide mineral, dimorphous with massicot, and is often found as a crust enveloping an inner core of massicot in a rock base. Linarite is amphoteric - it dissolves equally well in acids and alkalis, and was formerly used to prepare lead salts and plumbates to make rust-resistant paints. Research Litharge
Abbreviations
Research Adulteration
