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<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en"> <head><script type="text/javascript" src="https://web-static.archive.org/_static/js/bundle-playback.js?v=7YQSqjSh" charset="utf-8"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="https://web-static.archive.org/_static/js/wombat.js?v=txqj7nKC" charset="utf-8"></script> <script>window.RufflePlayer=window.RufflePlayer||{};window.RufflePlayer.config={"autoplay":"on","unmuteOverlay":"hidden"};</script> <script type="text/javascript" src="https://web-static.archive.org/_static/js/ruffle/ruffle.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> __wm.init("https://web.archive.org/web"); __wm.wombat("http://www33.brinkster.com/iiiii/gasmask/stenhouse.html","20110517111612","https://web.archive.org/","web","https://web-static.archive.org/_static/", "1305630972"); </script> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="https://web-static.archive.org/_static/css/banner-styles.css?v=p7PEIJWi" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="https://web-static.archive.org/_static/css/iconochive.css?v=3PDvdIFv" />  <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1"/> <title>The Velvet-lined Gas Mask of John Stenhouse</title> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/web/20110517111612cs_/http://www33.brinkster.com/iiiii/gasmask/supplement.css"/> <style type="text/css"> #content {font-family:serif} h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { text-align:center } h2 {letter-spacing:0.12em; word-spacing:0.7em} h5 {font-style:italic} .author {font-variant:small-caps; font-weight:bold; letter-spacing:0.05em;} .x:first-letter { float:left; line-height:1.6ex; font-size:200%; font-weight:bold; } .x span {font-variant:small-caps} #fig {width:247px; float:right} /*/*/ #fig {margin:0 0 1em 1.2em} /*hide from NS4*/ #fig .cap1 {font-size:90%; font-weight:bold; text-align:center; margin:0;} #fig .cap2 {font-size:80%; text-align:center; margin-top:1em;} #bib {font-size:90%} #bib cite, #fig cite {font-weight:bold; font-style:normal} </style> </head> <body> <div id="header">from <cite>Armed Forces Chemical Journal</cite>, 1958, 12(3):24-25</div> <div id="content"> <h2>THE VELVET-LINED GAS MASK OF<br/> JOHN STENHOUSE</h2> <h4>By <span class="author">Wyndham D. Miles</span></h4> <h5>U. S. Army Chemical Corps Historical Office</h5> <div id="fig"><img src="/web/20110517111612im_/http://www33.brinkster.com/iiiii/gasmask/img/stenhouse.gif" alt="Stenhouse's mask"/><p class="cap1">Woodcut of Stenhouse's mask.</p><p class="cap2">From Edward L. Youmans' <cite>Class-Book of Chemistry</cite>, New York, 1858.</p></div> <p class="x"><span>The first</span> gas masks were devised more than a century ago. They were intended for industrial, medical and military purposes. So far as chemical warfare is concerned, this was sixty years before gases were used in battle.</p> <p>As is the case with many inventions, the idea did not occur to one man alone. During the 19th century several persons conceived the idea of a mask that would fit over the mouth and nostrils and remove unpleasant or harmful materials from inhaled air.</p> <p>One of the most interesting masks was that devised by the Scotsman John Stenhouse in the 1850's. Stenhouse was a first-class scientist, in contrast to inventors who came up with Rube Goldberg ideas, and his mask, of which apparently a number were made, seems to have been quite practical.</p> <p>Stenhouse's mask evolved from his investigations carried on around 1850 on the absorptive power of plain and activated charcoal. The scope of his work is indicated by the titles of a few of his articles, "On the Economical Applications of Charcoal to Sanitary Purposes," "On Platinised Charcoal," and "On Decolorizing Charcoals and Their Power of Absorbing Some of the Gases," all published between 1854 and 1858.</p> <p>Chemists before this time had been aware of charcoal's power of removing odors from the air. An example frequently found in early 19th Century texts is that of a thin layer of charcoal strewn over a piece of decaying meat would prevent unpleasant odors from arising. Stenhouse went a step further and found that charcoal would remove chlorine, hydrogen sulphide, and ammonia from air.</p> <p>Being interested in the practical applications of chemistry (he held patents in dyeing, waterproofing, tanning, and production of sugar), Stenhouse saw several possible uses for his discovery. A mask filled with charcoal, for example, would protect house-painters from vapors that arose from paint solvents, gunners in casemated batteries from gases of exploding powder, and travelers in unhealthy regions from miasmas (Stenhouse lived in the days when people thought that particles of infectious matter, called miasmas, floating in the air, caused disease).</p> <p>He designed two masks, apparently quite similar, one of which is pictured here. In the mask powdered wood charcoal filled the space between two hemispheres of wire gauze. The frame of the mask was copper, but the edges were of soft lead and were lined with velvet to allow the mask to be molded tightly to the face. The upper supporting band was elastic while the lower band tied behind the head. Exhausted charcoal could be removed and be replaced by fresh charcoal through a small door in the wire gauze.</p> <p class="x"><span>Stenhouse</span> exhibited his "charcoal air-filter" for the first time at a meeting of the Society of Arts in 1854. He did not patent the idea, but gave it to the public. Some manufacturer evidently saw commercial possibilities in the mask, judging from the statement made by Georg Wilson, professor of technology at the University of Edinburgh: "Certain of the large chemical manufacturers in London are now supplying their workmen with the charcoal respirators as a protection against the more irritating vapors to which they are exposed." Wilson also commented on another possible industrial use for the mask: "Many deaths have occurred among those employed to explore the large drains and sewers of London from exposure to sulphuretted hydrogen, etc. It may be asserted with confidence that fatal results from exposure to the drainage gases will cease as soon as the respirator is brought into use." However, the most startling statement by Wilson concerned the possible military use of the mask in chemical warfare: "The longing for a short and decisive war has led to the invention of a suffocating bombshell; which on bursting, spreads far and wide an irrespirable or poisonous vapor; one of the liquids proposed for this shell is the strongest ammonia, and against this it is believed that the charcoal respirator may defend our soldiers. As likely to serve this end, it is at present before the Board of Ordnance."</p> <p>Along with the mask for protecting an individual, Stenhouse invented a device to purify air entering rooms. It was a sandwich made up of two sheets of wire gauze, filled with charcoal. This device was used, according to Stenhouse, to deodorize the air entering several government offices: "One of these air-filters, or charcoal ventilators, was erected more than three months ago in the justice-room, at the Mansion-House. This apartment, from the position of several nuisances in the very narrow street from which it is ventilated, was usually so offensive as to have become the subject of general complaint. Since the erection of the charcoal ventilator, through which all the air entering the apartment is made to pass, all the impurities are absorbed, and the atmosphere of the air has been made unexceptionable. From the success attending on the charcoal ventilator at the Mansion-House, the city authorities have fitted up the justice-room at Guildhall with a similar apparatus, which is giving equal satisfaction." Stenhouse's air filter sounds very much like our modern collective protectors, and it acted, from Stenhouse's description, in much the same fashion.</p> <p>Stenhouse was born in Glasgow, Scotland on October 31, 1809. He was twenty-five years old when he turned to chemistry, and this came about because of the growing dependence of his father's business, calico-printing, upon chemistry. After he started to study chemistry, the science caught him up and never let go. In Glasgow he attended the lectures of Thomas Graham, the father of colloid chemistry, and Thomas Thompson, the great historian of chemistry. Then he went off to Giessen, Germany, to learn the technique of practical chemistry in the laboratory, of Justus von Liebig.</p> <p class="x"><span>In</span> 1839 a Glasgow bank failed, carrying down with it the fortune left Stenhouse by his father. Through his investigations in industrial chemistry, however, Stenhouse built up a modest fortune of his own. His specialty, like that of many other chemists of his time, was organic chemistry. He published more than one hundred papers in British, German, and French scientific journals. He was the first to synthesize trichloronitromethane, which he christened Chloropicrin in his articles in Liebig's <cite>Annalen</cite> 66, 241-247 (1848). He noted the obnoxious properties of chloropicrin, but it remained for the Russians in 1916 to turn the compound to the purposes of war.</p> <p>In 1865 the British government appointed Stenhouse one of the assayers of the Royal Mint, and in 1871 the Royal Society presented him with a medal for his researches in chemistry. During the last four years of his life, he suffered from an eye ailment that forced him to live in a darkened room. He died on December 31, 1880.</p> <p>In this series of articles we have already mentioned Lyon Playfair, Thomas Cochrane, Forrest Shepherd, John Doughty, and other men, all of whom suggested that chemicals be used in warfare. John Stenhouse represents the other side of the coin, a chemist who provided a method for protecting soldiers against poison gases in battle.</p> <p>Bibliographical note:</p> <p id="bib">A biographical sketch of Stenhouse is in the <cite>Journal of the Chemical Society</cite>, 39, 185-88 (1881). His description of his charcoal ventilator for purifying the air entering rooms is from his article, "On the Economical Application of Charcoal to Sanitary Purposes," <cite>Royal Institution of Great Britain, Proceedings</cite>, 2, 53-55 (1854-58). George Wilson's statements are from <cite>Transactions of the Royal Scottish Society of Arts</cite> 4, Appendix 0, 198 (1854).</p> </div> </body> </html>