Word: dowe
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Mining the Ocean. A year ago magnesium was extracted from only one source, Michigan's brine wells; by only one enterprising producer, Dow Chemical Co.; and by only one method, electrolysis of molten magnesium chloride recovered from salt water. This is a chemical trick so old that it is known as a prior art and is not patentable. Last winter Trust-Buster Thurman Arnold's division of the Department of Justice sued Dow as a monopoly, but the chief reason that Dow had magnesium all to itself was that before the U.S. began rushing warplanes there...
Until this spring, Dow drew all its magnesium from its inexhaustible brine wells at Midland, Mich. From these it is now extracting magnesium at the rate of 12,000 tons a year-26 times as much as in 1929. This spring Dow tapped a new source which has stirred everyone's imagination : it began mining sea water for magnesium at a great $15,000,000 plant at Freeport, Tex., which by year's end will be sucking in 12,000,000 gallons a day (enough water for a city of 120,000) and turning out 50 tons...
...While Dow has been pioneering the extraction of magnesium from water, others have been studying how to extract magnesium from rock. TVA scientists are working on the Carolinas' abundant magnesium silicate called olivine, of which 27% is recoverable magnesium (in contrast to sea water's .1%). When this ore is mixed with hydrochloric acid, magnesium chloride is formed which can be treated by electrolysis just like that from water. Because olivine is so rich in metal and TVA power sells cheaply, experiments have been launched at Georgia Tech in the hope of making this a major U.S. source...
...backers of both these processes hope to get magnesium for 12?, 10?, perhaps even less a pound. Dow is skeptical about the Hansgirg process (Dow turned it down), but Dow itself has cut the price of magnesium from $5 in 1915 to 50? in 1925 to 30? in 1931 and is said to have sold magnesium to Germany before the war as low as 21? a lb. Dow's magnesium costs are inextricably tied up with other chemicals, notably bromine, which are recovered simultaneously. If some of Dow's first costs can be written off against emergency production...
Dealings on the New York Stock Exchange sagged to 524,260 shares from 873,280 shares the day before. The Dow-Jones industrials average showed the greatest decline in a month. Industrials lost .90 of a point, rails .29 and Treasury bonds, deciding that hard money was now as likely as inflation, dropped 1/32 to 7/32...