By Matthew Shoen
I think we are all well aware of Buffalo’s historic
industries and the important companies that shaped this city. Companies like the
Lackawanna Steel Plant are nationally known, and on this blog we’ve covered
smaller industrial compounds like the Mentholatum Factory and Kreiner
Malthouse. One factory complex in North Buffalo has however slipped under the
radar. This factory is a nationally significant complex located at 155 Chandler Street. The complex was once the Linde Air Products Factory, the first producer of purified liquid oxygen
in the United States.
Liquid oxygen isn’t flashy like steel
mills, or quirky like Mentholatum ointment, but the liquid oxygen produced at
the Linde Air Products Factory was crucial for the development of this country
in ways that might require a bid of chemistry to understand.
Historically, pure oxygen was extracted from the decay of
either potassium chlorate or barium oxide. The most common use of this extracted oxygen was the creation of
limelights an early stage lighting tool used in theaters. Limelight production
sustained many early oxygen-producing companies but the market was incredibly
constrained by the limited uses people had for purified oxygen. In the 1890s
this changed when a French scientist named Henri le Chatelier discovered that
when he mixed acetylene with pure oxygen he could create a flame that burned at
3200C the highest temperature mankind had obtained to that point. Le
Chatelier’s discovery sparked a growing demand in pure oxygen as new uses for
oxyacetylene were experimented with. Early on there were attempts to use it in
lighting but these plans quickly faded as incandescent lightbulbs and electricity
became the standard bearers of illumination. Though it was an inefficient
lighting source, oxyacetylene found a major market in the welding and metal
cutting industries. Oxyacetylene torches became crucial to steel cutting,
bridge building, ship construction, and many other industrial processes. The
benefits of these new torches were felt initially in Europe as European
scientists had been the ones to experiment with oxygen separation and acetylene
production. One European, a German man named Carl Von Linde, whose air rectification
process made him one of the premiere suppliers of liquid oxygen in the world, wanted to grow his company, and saw America as a market primed for expansion.
In 1906 he began soliciting for investors and in 1907, on Thanksgiving Day, the
first Linde Air Products oxygen factory was opened in Buffalo.
The Linde Air Products Factory was found quick success and
quickly outstripped its German parent company. Feeling constrained by management from overseas, the American investors in Linde Air Products began pulling away from the German company. Tensions between the branches were only exacerbated by the growing tensions between America and German. The two branches separated when the United States entered World War I, and in 1917 the American Branch of
Linde Air came under ownership of the Union Carbide Company a major seller of
acetylene and oxyacetylene torches from Niagara Falls. The merger of these two
companies, along with the addition of a few small acetylene producing companies, made
Union Carbide one of the most powerful dealers of welding equipment and
industrial gases in the western hemisphere.
Had Linde Air Products been nothing
more than America’s first oxygen production company its importance would have
been clear. However, Linde Air Products was an important part of one of the defining
moments of twentieth century American history. Primarily in the company’s
Tonawanda facility, but also with support from the lab on Chandler Street,
Linde Air Products worked on the Manhattan Project, helping to enrich uranium
for the atomic bomb.
By the outbreak of World War II, the Chandler Street
facility had transitioned from an oxygen producing factory to a research
laboratory. The Linde ceramics factory already had experience utilizing uranium for ceramic glazing and in 1943 it was chosen to enrich uranium for the atomic bombs. The Chandler Street facility
likely provided support to the scientists working in Tonawanda. Though I wasn’t
able to find any explanation of how the Chandler Street lab and Tonawanda
facility worked together it is clear that employees at both facilities were
involved in the Manhattan Project. In 1945, just after the war ended, General
Leslie Groves the commander in chief of the country’s atomic division came to
Buffalo and gave medals to the Linde employees who’d been involved in the
Manhattan Project. Among them was Louis Ayres who worked in the Chandler Street
Lab. Who is Louis Ayres and what was his involvement in the Manhattan Project? Unfortunately
the intense level of secrecy surrounding the development of atomic weaponry has
made researching Linde’s role in the creation of nuclear weapons difficult to
pin down. The company constantly offered positions in its plants for
experienced chemists and lab assistants, likely to assist in the uranium
enrichment process, but these advertisements offer nothing more than hints to
the scope of the company’s role in the Manhattan Project. The
Tonawanda plant’s involvement in uranium ore enrichment has been well documented, however the contributions
of the Chandler Street lab have never been disclosed and remain classified.
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| Linde Air in Tonawanda, site of Uranium Enrichment for the Atomic Bomb. Image from Fultonhistory.com |
Unfortunately the effects of Linde’s uranium enrichment in
Tonawanda have been well documented in recent decades. 37 million gallons of
radioactive water and sludge were dumped into shallow wells in Tonawanda
between 1944-46 providing a continued question of how to best deal with this
waste and the effects it might have on future generations. Given the long half-life
of so many of these radioactive materials they will certainly affect Western
New York for hundreds of years.
Because of this radioactive dumping Linde Air Products holds
a dubious place in the history of Western New York. While the company brought
oxygen extraction to America and became part of one of the most powerful
chemical companies in the country, it also was responsible for creating major
environmental hazards through its work on the Manhattan Project. The company’s
technological advances make it one of the most significant businesses in
Buffalo, but the manner in which those technologies were put to use has created
lasting issues. Further, I’m still curious to
know how the Chandler Street Plant was used. More than likely it supported
operations in the Linde ceramics factory and had no real impact on the
Manhattan Project. Still, the plant’s status as a classified site has me
curious. If we know the army was enriching uranium in Tonawanda who knows what
they were doing on Chandler Street?
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| Image from blog.nuclearsecrets.com |
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