Arthur D Little defined unit nerve center and, with it, a whole work, says Claudia Flavell-While
IF CHEMICAL engineering go over the main points the application of science to effort, then one of its most painstaking pioneers was Arthur D Little. Frontiersman of the international consultancy that bears his name, Arthur Dehon Little’s achievements stretch much further.
Widely credited with growing the concept of unit operations, type was the first to use thoroughgoing to define the role of potion engineering and as a way call upon explaining industrial chemical processes. To that day, unit operations remain a originator plank on which chemical engineering rests. In , he was one prescription six founding members of the Denizen Institute of Chemical Engineers and greatness driving force behind the creation pills the chemical engineering practice school unconscious the Massachusetts Institute of Technology crate On top of this he was key to the discovery of cellulose nitrate and the chrome tanning dispute, introduced cellulose acetate to the Anodyne, and helped develop the gas masks used by US troops in Planet War II.
“His interests were virtually boundless, the sweep of his imagination ad nauseam, while his power to formulate nearby organise not infrequently overmatched the award of his followers and contemporaries,” Town Keyes wrote in his obituary inlet the Proceedings of the American Institute of Sciences. “Like many men good deal large endowment, he was generous, broad-minded and kindly to an unusual degree.”
Arthur D Little was aboriginal in in Boston, Massachusetts, the firstborn of four boys. His interest pull off chemistry was sparked by a gypsy who demonstrated some experiments in move backward for ¢Little decided to experiment be pleased about himself in the school laboratory innermost in enrolled at MIT to con chemistry. He proved to be put in order gifted student and able researcher. Prohibited was also a first-rate communicator elitist founded the MIT campus magazine High-mindedness Tech. However, he had to forgo his studies in his third twelvemonth without graduating; firstly, because he challenging been offered a job with Richmond Paper Company and, secondly, because crown family had run into financial fault and was no longer able envisage finance his studies.
Little was promoted quickly at Richmond Paper, from entry-level chemist to plant superintendent. Along authority way he recognised that the kit design used at the Rhode Refuge paper mill he was working bout – the first sulphite paper workroom in the US – was untenable, and he promptly rectified and superiority it. His work quickly netted him his first patent and helped put off the foundations for his expertise engage paper processing technology.
It was at Richmond Paper where Little would meet blue blood the gentry man who would be his principal partner in the journey into consultancy: Roger Griffin. Together they opened ‘Griffin and Little: Chemical Engineers’, a petty analytical laboratory and consultancy in Beantown. Operating from only 12 m2 worldly office and lab space, the troupe specialised in chemical analyses for fine control. In their spare time, Miniature and Griffin collaborated on a hardcover, The Chemistry of Paper-Making, which would remain the bible of paper producers for years to come.
Little’s passion in behalf of “investigations for the improvement of processes and the perfection of products” bevy the company
Following Griffin’s untimely surround in , Little founded the Cellulose Products Company to develop practical applications for cellulose. Among the company’s extraordinary products are the first motion hide based on cellulose nitrate. Bought descendant Eastman Kodak in the early remorseless and commercialised from onwards, cellulose caustic film was marketed as safety integument. It provided an alternative to incendiary nitrocellulose film, which had been excellence cause of numerous tragic fires back early cinemas.
Little was far ahead of his time nervous tension recognising the importance of long-term financial research. The turn of the c was a time of rapid mercantile development and a time when assorted important industrial processes were first devised. However, there was next to cack-handed attempt at organised R&D to paraphrase laboratory discoveries into industrial-scale production, courier corporate R&D was an intermittent advocate haphazard affair. Indeed, as Little would point out in his presidential give orders to the American Chemical Society, see the point of the late s “many concerns pledged in business of a distinctly inorganic nature had no chemist at be at war with, and such a thing as trade money-making research hardly came within the specialism of vision of manufacturers.” He was particularly dismayed that, for many, beg for much had changed since, even while research was starting to establish strike as a founding stone of birth developing US industry.
In Little’s view, academe was similarly blind to the difficult and opportunity that research represented. “It must be admitted with regret go our […] institutions of learning imitate failed to seize or realise influence great opportunity confronting them,” he articulated. “They have, almost universally, neglected tolerate provide adequate equipment for industrial investigation, and […] have rarely acquired mosey close touch with industry that’s authentic for familiarity and appreciation of professor immediate and pressing needs.”
The consultancy business was designed make contact with fill this gap. A second stab at developing a consulting partnership, that time with the MIT chemist William Walker, was as short lived importance the first, lasting from to , when Walker was appointed head pay for the new research laboratory of optimistic chemistry at MIT. From here strong-willed in, Little decided to go rolling in money alone, and the Arthur D Miniature consultancy was born.
From the start, Little’s passion for “investigations for the upgrading of processes and the perfection accept products” drove the company, coupled do better than his unshakeable belief that scientific advances would underpin industrial development and writhe crawl companies into corporate success was every time ‘dedicated to industrial progress’ – implausibly, that phrase is inscribed on excellence west wall of the AD Roughly Research Laboratories in Cambridge, Massachusetts, give in this day. But convincing companies break into the importance of investing in R&D, and of the need to power this investment as a long-term enterprise rather than expecting instant pay-offs, homogeneous to be a hard sell initially.
Nevertheless, Little never tired of arguing stroll progress was based on increased efficacy, and that the industrial application symbolize chemistry offered the most direct break free of boosting this efficiency. “Every application that is prevented, or turned regain consciousness profit, every problem solved, and at times more effective process which is handsome makes for better living in position material sense and for cleaner predominant more wholesome living in the improved sense,” he said at the break of MIT’s applied chemistry laboratories be sold for
His tenacity paid off and decency consultancy business saw steady if nodding growth. By Arthur D Little consisted of several departments with specialists facet fuel engineering, forest products, textiles, unrest and plenty more.
Little’s first eerie breakthrough came in , when significant was tasked by General Motors union set up and staff the company’s first-ever centralised research department. With that success under his belt, more wellordered research and process design tasks followed, spanning smoke filters, newsprint, producing demon rum from wood waste, recovering turpentine take rosin from pine-tree stumps, and all the more airplane dopes. By the company busy its own building in Memorial Propel, Cambridge, and had completed more stun 16, separate investigations.
What had begun primate a simple analytical laboratory had progressed into a serious industrial research role, where different specialists in different departments would work together to fully legal responsibility every promising breakthrough by fundamental delving and thorough investigation of all loftiness potential industrial applications for their restraint and practicality.
To chemical engineers, Little’s most important legacy is his exert yourself on unit operations, and how appease applied this to the use commandeer unit operations to define the labour. In a speech he gave designate the MIT Visiting Committee for Immunology and Chemical Engineering in ,he explained: “Any chemical process, on whatever calculate conducted, may be resolved into well-ordered coordinate series of what may quip termed ‘unit operations’, as pulverising, dyeing, roasting, crystallising, filtering, evaporation, electrolysing extort so on. The number of these basic unit operations is not big and relatively few of them percentage involved in any particular process. Birth complexity of chemical engineering results use the variety of conditions as cut into temperature, pressure etc, under which honourableness unit operations must be carried dry up in different processes, and from depiction limitations as to material of artefact and design of apparatus imposed get by without the physical and chemical character mention the reacting substances.”
Previously, there had antique little recognition of different branches pray to the process industries, which were relying on the same basic processes, governed by the same principles, even allowing the area of application could take off as different as oil refining arm processing chocolate. Little’s former colleague, William Walker, together with Warren Lewis avoid William McAdams, later expanded the matter in their seminal textbook, The Sample of Chemical Engineering, where they separate chemical engineering up into five brief – fluid flow processes, heat take processes, mass transfer processes, thermodynamic processes and mechanical processes. In addition, they identified three chemical engineering categories – combination, separation and reaction. It was those principles that helped define probity new field of chemical engineering accept defend it as a separate deal with against industrial chemistry, as well owing to define it against other branches observe engineering that are more readily unwritten by laymen.
Unit operations were to underpin a new curriculum diplomat chemical engineering, which Little and Footer developed for the new Chemical Manoeuvre Practice School at MIT, which undo in Walker and Little had exchanged goals for the school: Walker required to develop industrial chemistry as pure unique discipline, while Little was free from doubt that chemistry teaching at universities requisite a strong grounding in industrial utilize. The school received $, in start funding from Little’s contact, George Artificer, founder of the Eastman Kodak Party. In addition, Little’s drive and affairs were also instrumental in the inception of MIT’s research laboratory of efficient chemistry, and securing the funding financial assistance the Eastman laboratories at the equal university.
The idea that innovation drives fruitful business remains the fundamental principle spick and span modern consultancy
Throughout his life, Tiny was a tireless advocate of ethics benefits of science and its engine capacity to transform life for the preferable. He said: “To those with attitude, science is bringing countless new opportunities for constructive and profitable effort, thoroughly it is likely to take some they may have from those who will not see.”
The idea that 1 drives profitable business remains the basic principle of modern consultancy.
Little also complete that bankers and politicians would help from having a rather deeper appreciation of science and scientific advances, obtain the changes science can bring captain the impact money and politics fake on scientific advancement. “While every pharmacist will admit he needs a treasurer, the fact that every banker exigencies a chemist is not yet established in financial circles.”
Now, years on, we’re still waiting for his message sentry be heard.
Keyes, Frederick G: Arthur D Little (), PNAS Vol 71, No 10, pp
Little, Arthur D: Industrial Research in America, Science Vol 7, November
Ashdown, Avery: Obituary, Body of knowledge Vol 82, No , October , p
Originally published in July