Cobalt, Goblins And Globins

Cobalt's mysterious name apparently traces back to Greek and Latin roots meaning evil spirit. read more. Though known to Paracelsus (1493-1541) as salts and oxides, cobalt was not considered an element until Antoine Lavoisier redefined the very term "element."
_________

Chemists have a little mnemonic teaching rhyme which goes:

 If it's blue, it's cobalt (II).

Cobalt (II) salts give the gorgeous deep blue color which contrasts the stark white tin glaze used in Delftware pottery:

_____________

Like iron, our bodies need cobalt -- just less of it. Vitamin B₁₂, also called cobalamin, contains cobalt. Vitamin B₁₂ fascinates me because it was present at several very important 20^th century chemical mileposts. I could write a blog post about each and every of the following:

• How the discovery of liver juice and liver extracts cured pernicious anemia, leading to a Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1934.
• How after the curative factor was isolated and named Vitamin B₁₂, British chemist Dorothy Hodgkin determined its structure using X-ray crystallography. Vitamin B₁₂ was then the most complex natural molecule known.* Hodgkin received the 1964 Nobel Chemistry Prize for her work.
• How Hodgkin's structure inspired Robert Burns Woodward, American chemist extraordinaire, to synthesize B₁₂ de novo. This work, his crowning oeuvre, in collaboration with Albert Eschenmoser in Switzerland, spanned a dozen years and spawned much new chemistry and also a set of rules which led to another Nobel Prize in 1981 (which Woodward would have shared had he lived).
• How the isolation of Vitamin B₁₂ sparked a legal battle in the patent world beginning in the late 1950's: the legal question was whether something found in nature was patentable subject matter or not. Ironically, SCOTUS may be revisiting parts of a 1958 case this fall when they decide to hear arguments or not regarding the patentability of genes.

______________

*While the contemporaneous discovery of DNA (the double helix) was perhaps more important, B₁₂ was intellectually more interesting, involving as it did a novel cobalt-carbon bond. 

Too Many Chiefs And Not Enough Indians

Well this sounds familiar:

The early printers had already organized their offices into a sort of freemasonry, under which the discipline was promoted and trade secrets protected. Each guild was composed of masters, journeymen (paid workers), and apprentices, with far more proprietors than journeymen.*

______________________________

*The Duchy of Magdeburg in Germany had 27,050 independent masters and only 4,285 journeymen and apprentices in 1784; the principality of Wurzburg had 13,762 masters and 2,176 journeymen and apprentices. Thus five-sixths of the industrial establishments of the two places employed no extra help, but were one-man shops.--Industrial Evolution by Karl Bucher

from ITU Lessons in Printing. Trade Unionism Unit VI (1958)

I would like to see a comparable breakdown of unionized workforce by cohorts. I suspect that part of the problem today is a top-heavy superstructure. I also suspect that there was little opportunity for young people in the Old Country for such reasons. It's also personally interesting to me because my family immigrated from that time and place to this country. And while preoccupied with agricultural (as was the whole nation) for almost a century, many family members eventually found their way back to the organized labor force.

It Is The Duty Of Union Men To Keep Informed

My dad was a member of the International Printers Union (ITU) from around 1960 when I was born to the Fall of 1977 when his union struck Madison Newspapers, Inc. The strike was a long and bitter one and ended with a tiny negotiated settlement.

Among the books and papers which my mother gave me after my father's death in 1995 was a volume entitled Trade Unionism. The slim volume was published in 1958 and appears to have been written for new members of the ITU. Here is the preface, entitled It Is The Duty Of Union Men To Keep Informed:

If we are to be successful in convincing unorganized workers, as well as employers, congressmen, and the general public of the merits of labor's program, it is necessary that every union man and woman first understand the social and economic facts of our modern industrial life. If we are to ask the membership of our union to decide economic questions intelligently and on their merits, it is first necessary that they have adequate knowledge of such questions. We have long since recognized that fact in our requirements for citizenship. Before an immigrant can be admitted to full responsibility of American citizenship, he must know something of the history and constitution of our country. Before a new member of the union can fully serve his organization, it is essential that he know its history and aims; also the problems confronting organized labor.

--Preface to ITU Lessons in Printing. Trade Unionism Unit VI (1958)

The rest of the book looks like an interesting (albeit biased) monograph on the history and development of organized labor, specifically in the printing arts. I'm going to examine this briefly, in view of all the State Employee Union activities and backlash in Wisconsin and in California.