With a bolt stripped the seals/gaskets wouldn’t hold and the apparatus
could not be pressurised. There was little choice but to fix the problem, but
that morning the laboratory was psychologically ‘tooled up’ for demonstrating
and not for engineering. For Bosch in particular, time passed slowly as the
repairs dragged on and he soon left for another appointment, failing to
return.
40 Haber may well have seen his dreams going out of the door along
with Bosch but several hours later the fix was made and he and Robert were
‘back in business’. From now on things would go smoothly. Everyone knew
instinctively what to do next and Mittasch and Kranz were about to witness a
flawless performance by the machine as the ‘furnace’ was reassembled and the
new bolts tightened. Once again, the compressor pressurised the gas from the
gasometer. The apparatus was evacuated, the gas admitted and the liquefier
cooled. Finally, the heating element and the circulation pump were turned on
and Robert stood by his valves.
Not for the first time that day, time passed slowly for Mittasch and Kranz
as the machine began to practise its art. At first, they saw little happening as
Robert skilfully moved his gasses on. But then, at about nine o’clock at night
6
… ice began to form on the cold regenerator, pearls of liquid ammonia
gradually appeared in the water glass only to disappear like tears in the rain as
liquid formed. Mittasch stared enthralled as the liquid began to rise and
Haber periodically drew off samples to convince him that it was indeed
ammonia. Over the next few hours the machine performed faultlessly as the
men chatted, asked questions, collected the ammonia periodically and calculated the yield. After a while Mittasch had seen enough and he shook
Haber’s hand enthusiastically, utterly convinced by the process. Whatever was
to happen next in the development of synthetic ammonia would be out of
Robert’s hands but he realised that he was part of an historic occasion and he
made sure he obtained a memento of the day. He kept it for the next
43 years, but after five hours he turned the machine off. That night they
made 500–600 g of liquid ammonia.
6 The next day Haber wrote a letter
41 to
the directors of BASF describing the events of 02 July 1909;
Yesterday we began operating the large ammonia apparatus with gas circulation
in the presence of Dr Mittasch and were able to keep its uninterrupted production for about five hours. During this whole time, it had functioned correctly and it produced liquid ammonia continuously. Because of the lateness of
the hour, and as we were all tired, we had stopped the production because
nothing new could be learned from continuing the experiment. All parts of the
apparatus were tight and functioned well, so it was easy to conclude that the
experiment could be repeated … The steady yield was 2 cm
3
/min and it was
176
D. Sheppard
could not be pressurised. There was little choice but to fix the problem, but
that morning the laboratory was psychologically ‘tooled up’ for demonstrating
and not for engineering. For Bosch in particular, time passed slowly as the
repairs dragged on and he soon left for another appointment, failing to
return.
40 Haber may well have seen his dreams going out of the door along
with Bosch but several hours later the fix was made and he and Robert were
‘back in business’. From now on things would go smoothly. Everyone knew
instinctively what to do next and Mittasch and Kranz were about to witness a
flawless performance by the machine as the ‘furnace’ was reassembled and the
new bolts tightened. Once again, the compressor pressurised the gas from the
gasometer. The apparatus was evacuated, the gas admitted and the liquefier
cooled. Finally, the heating element and the circulation pump were turned on
and Robert stood by his valves.
Not for the first time that day, time passed slowly for Mittasch and Kranz
as the machine began to practise its art. At first, they saw little happening as
Robert skilfully moved his gasses on. But then, at about nine o’clock at night
6
… ice began to form on the cold regenerator, pearls of liquid ammonia
gradually appeared in the water glass only to disappear like tears in the rain as
liquid formed. Mittasch stared enthralled as the liquid began to rise and
Haber periodically drew off samples to convince him that it was indeed
ammonia. Over the next few hours the machine performed faultlessly as the
men chatted, asked questions, collected the ammonia periodically and calculated the yield. After a while Mittasch had seen enough and he shook
Haber’s hand enthusiastically, utterly convinced by the process. Whatever was
to happen next in the development of synthetic ammonia would be out of
Robert’s hands but he realised that he was part of an historic occasion and he
made sure he obtained a memento of the day. He kept it for the next
43 years, but after five hours he turned the machine off. That night they
made 500–600 g of liquid ammonia.
6 The next day Haber wrote a letter
41 to
the directors of BASF describing the events of 02 July 1909;
Yesterday we began operating the large ammonia apparatus with gas circulation
in the presence of Dr Mittasch and were able to keep its uninterrupted production for about five hours. During this whole time, it had functioned correctly and it produced liquid ammonia continuously. Because of the lateness of
the hour, and as we were all tired, we had stopped the production because
nothing new could be learned from continuing the experiment. All parts of the
apparatus were tight and functioned well, so it was easy to conclude that the
experiment could be repeated … The steady yield was 2 cm
3
/min and it was
176
D. Sheppard