An awful lot of useful chemistry is emulsions. You get an emulsion when you mix two liquids that don't mix.

Oil - such as butterfat - and water - such as the nonfat part of milk - don't mix. Let milk stand, and the cream will rise to the top. At the dairy, they homogenize milk, which is to say, they turn the globules of milk into itty bitty globules, and if they are divided finely enough, it takes less time for the milk to spoil than for the globules to work their way back together.

Jergen's lotion is another emulsion. So is mayonaisse.

The Miracle Of Modern Chemistry

In the 1950s, a chemist working for NCR corporation decided that it was a pain to have to change the ink ribbon in a cash register. He got the idea that if you had two chemicals that turned dark when they mixed, you could get them to mix when they were struck by a piece of type. How do you separate them? You use one chemical that's oil-based and one that's water based, and form an emulsion. When the emulsion is milled fine enough, you add a third chemical to the liquid that forms a barrier at the interface between the oil and the water. The chemicals can then be painted onto paper - well, it's actually silkscreened, so that the thickness is carefully controlled - and you end up with a paper that turns dark if it's pressed hard.

NCR bought Appleton Paper somewhere along the line - I'm not sure if they bought it when they invented this microencapsulation process or if they bought it years before to make regular paper tape for cash registers - and they start making not only ribbonless cash register tape, but also paper for carbonless multi-part forms.

The potential seemed limitless. They produced a wide variety of microencapsulated fragrances, silk-screened onto cards, for "scratch 'n' sniff" promotions. They encapsulated aspirin for Sterling Drug, the company that owns Bayer, for a slow-release aspirin product. They encapsulated something, I'm not sure what, that got included in cement; it allowed air-entrained concrete to be poured in freezing weather.

Mood Rings

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, they encapsulated chromatic liquid crystal and silk-screened it on clear plastic to form the gems for "mood rings." At one point, $200 worth of chemicals could produce $300 million in jewelry, and NCR employees left the company to produce the product on their own, despite NCR's patents. The mechanical cash register was suddenly obsolete, and NCR had 30,000 machinists laid off, but building 33, with fewer than 20 employees, was generating such massive profits that it was keeping the rest of the company afloat. The patents were apparently pretty ineffective, for "Scratch 'N' Sniff" was a 3M trademark, not an NCR one.

NCR Carbonless Paper

They produced encapsulated liquid smoke; it made a marvelous addition to BBQ sauce. They made large capsules of hair oil, which Helene Curtis put in Hair Care shampoo. The shampoo dried out your hair, and when you brushed your hair afterwards, you'd break the capsules, putting the oil back into your hair. As an experiment, they put mint flavoring in capsules, which Esther Price put into their chocolate candies. The candy was great when you ate it - but the capsules would dissolve later, causing the mint to "repeat" on you. They discussed encapsulating wind, and adding it to beans, so that when you farted, it would blow the odor away from you, but nobody figured out how to do that.

Skunk Odorant

Tertriary butyl mercaptain is one of the principal odors in skunk. It's also the odor they put in natural gas so that you detect leaks. I made 30 gallons of encapsulated t-butyl mercaptain, put plastic liners in steel 5-gallon cans, sealed the product in the lined cans, and bagged the cans in the heaviest plastic bags we could buy. The product needed to be hauled from Dayton up to Detroit, where it would be silk-screened onto cards which would, in turn, be enclosed in gas bills so that people would know what gas leaks would smell like.

We didn't trust any commercial carrier to touch the stuff. I could have used my own car, and collected milage, but I thought better of it. I rented a Mercury Malaise from a car rental agency and drove directly from Dayton to Detroit without stopping for gas, for a bathroom break, for a coke, for anything. We weren't sure what might happen if someone smelled the odor and called the cops. I had bills of lading, just in case I got in an accident, but I was warned not to volunteer anything to anyone if that happened, but to contact NCR headquarters immediately. Drive with traffic, don't attract attention, don't get in an accident, and don't hesitate to pray.

Getting There Is Half The Fun

I arrived at the printing place. I had a raging headache, despite holding my breath for hours. I unloaded the buckets, got the papers signed, and left as soon as possible. I opened all the windows and drove thirty miles away, bought a bottle of liquor to ease my headache, and took a number of showers, both evening and morning, while the car sat with the windows open, airing out.

And, in the morning, I drop back to Dayton with the windows open. Boy, was I glad I asked for a rental car rather than drive my own jalopy.

In the years since, I've thought about the guys silk-screening that stuff onto the cards, and the postal carriers delivering those cards to consumers, but especially the printers. They must have reeked for days.
Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
carbonless forms - cash register - emulsions - Esther Price - homogenization - Scratch 'N' Sniff - Sterling Drug - T-butyl mercaptain