Henry Rzepa's Blog

I started chemistry with a boxed set in 1962. In those days they contained serious amounts of chemicals, but I very soon ran out of most of them. Two discoveries turned what might have been a typical discarded christmas present into a lifelong career and hobby.

The first was 60 Stoke Newington High Street in north London, the home of Albert N. Beck, Chemist (or his son; my information comes from a historical listing of the shops present on the high street in 1921). I would set out from our home in London SW6 on the #73 bus route (top deck) and it would take about an hour to arrive. On entering the shop, I ventured down a set of stairs into the basement to replenish the chemicals with sensible stocks, and purchase the odd glassware, filter paper, etc. And then venture back across London carrying the proceeds of many weeks, possibly months worth of hoarded pocket-money (apart that is from 1 shilling every two weeks which I reserved for football at Craven Cottage). At some stage, health and safety legislated against 12-year-old boys (and certainly also girls) purchasing chemicals in this manner! However, I can assure you all that I never came to any harm with anything I purchased at A. N. Beck and Sons. Apart that is from giving my parents a good fright.

The second was coming across this book by A. J. Mee. I had thought it was well and truly lost; imagine my delight when I recently found it at home, complete with chemical stains, and dated as from a reprint in 1959.

On the inside cover, I found one shopping list from my expeditions to A. N. Beck and Sons. The price 1/6 is the representation of one shilling and six pence (more than the price of a football match, or perhaps £50 in today’s money? I think football was much cheaper then! Oh, 1/6 is 7.5p in the decimal currency of today, or £0.075). Note that iodine was one of the items purchased. And note the wish list at the bottom! I was clearly starting to do organic chemistry.

The pages of this book list 289 experiments, and I assiduously recorded a tick against all the ones I actually did. This is a typical page (click to expand).

Thus expt 205 is the preparation of 1,3,5-tribromobenzene from 1,3,5-tribromoaniline (ticked), followed by that of o-cresol from o-toluidine (ticked). You can see how all the aromatic rings are still represented by what now looks like cyclohexane. This book gave me many hours of delightful recreation (I have not counted the ticks, but I think I attempted around half the experiments). Note in particular the huge scale these experiments were done at; 18g of product (I suspect I must have scaled them down a fair bit in order to preserve pocket money). Expt 198 was that of benzidine, of which I do recollect preparing  ~2g. No warnings then about the extremely carcinogenic nature of this substance! Chemistry has certainly changed since then.

Lost unfortunately is the laboratory book where I recorded my results, but one or two samples still exist!