units usually were placed at pump­ing stations as far as possible from the sewage treatment plant to take advantage of the long retention times in underground lines. In most cases sewage was retained in the lines twice as long as it was in the treatment plant itself.

Lathrop executive vice president Carl H. Blohm says that the bacte­rial isolates also can be applied to rivers, lakes, and ponds, using crop dusting aircraft, to improve the ability of these bodies of water to assimilate sewage and other ef­fluents.

The Lathrop process is now being evaluated by the Washington Sub­urban Sanitary Commission, Wash­ington, D.C., in the hope that it will relieve the load on treatment plants and improve the condition of the Potomac River for the bicen­tennial in 1976.

Dow in $435 million deal for oil firm Dow Chemical is moving to build a stronger base of hydrocarbon feed­stocks. Last week, it agreed to ac­quire General Crude Oil Co. by late fall. General Crude Oil explores for oil and gas in the U.S., Canada, and various other parts of the world. It has substantial oil and gas production, much of it on the Gulf Coast.

If General Crude stockholders okay the agreement, they will re­ceive two thirds of a share of Dow common stock for each share of their common and 2.675 shares of Dow common for each share of General Crude preferred stock. General Crude has about 8.8 mil­lion shares of common and about 219,000 shares of preferred stock outstanding. The merger could in­volve about $435 million in Dow stock.

In 1973, General Crude produced an average of 28,900 barrels a day of liquid hydrocarbons, receiving an average price of $3.93 a barrel. Its natural gas production averaged 71.4 million cu. ft. a day, for which it received 22.4 cents per thousand cubic feet. General Crude's proper­ties, valued at $82.8 million in its 1973 annual report, include 932,300 undeveloped acres of potential oil and gas properties in the U.S., 1.9 million acres in Canada, and 2.9 million acres in other countries, in­cluding 1.5 million in New Guinea.

Whether Dow now will go ahead with a rumored refinery for the Gulf Coast elicits "no comment" from Dow spokesmen. Dow's future

capital expenditure plans, however, are huge. Paul F. Oreffice, Dow's financial vice president, estimates that the company's 1974 capital spending will be $750 million, of which $150 million will go for oil and gas properties. In 1975 capital expenditures will total about $1 bil­lion; 1973's total was $402 million.

Beckman to sell own process instruments As equipment ordering blooms dur­ing the chemical process industry's capital spending binge, a company long in this area has taken a decid­edly deeper plunge. Beckman In­struments, Fullerton, Calif., is en­tering the sophisticated electronic J process control instrumentation field after more than 30 years of selling its line of analytical instru­ments to chemical, oil, and related industries.

For Beckman, the move is a try for part of an electronic process control instrumentation market currently running at $150 million to $300 million per year by various definitions. A new peak in the mar­ket well may be approaching as chemical, oil, and other process companies back up record contract levels for new plants with orders for process control equipment.

Beckman's new offering includes controllers, computing modules, re­corders, transmitters, and accesso­ries. The introduction, made last week in New York City, caps a five-year development effort on an original equipment line.

Beckman's move into process control instruments is also the lat­est step in a long-range drive that has lifted the company's industrial sales from 20% of total sales in 1964 to close to 40% in the fiscal year ended June 30. Industrial sales are running neck and neck with Beck­man's medical instruments sales and are now way ahead of the two areas that used to dominate the company's marketing—science and space-defense outlets.

Currently, Beckman has its new process control line in evaluation tests with major end users. The company claims a number of tech­nical advances for its new instru­ment line such as inkless recorders and controllers that don't "bump" processors during switchovers in the mode of operation.

No installation of the new Beck­man line is yet in place. The com­pany is slating initial availability of the new line for January 1975, with a delivery time of 90 to 120 days.

Ex-ACS President Brode dead at 74 Wallace R. Brode, chosen ACS President-Elect in 1967 by the larg­est number of votes in recent ACS history, died Aug. 10, at George Washington University Hospital, Washington, D.C. He was 74.

A native of Walla Walla, Wash., Dr. Brode received his bachelor's degree from Whitman College in 1921, a masters in 1922, and a Ph.D. in 1925 from the University of Illinois. Dr. Brode was a Guggen­heim fellow at the universities of Leipzig, Zurich, and Liverpool from 1926 to 1928 before joining the fac­ulty of Ohio State University where

Wallace R. Brode

he became a full professor in 1939. He became associate director of the National Bureau of Standards in 1947, and was named science advis­er to the Secretary of State in 1958.

Dr. Brode was a member of the advisory board of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, and the Atomic En­ergy Commission from 1946 to 1962. He was president of the American Association for the Ad­vancement of Science in 1958 and of ACS in 1969. He was awarded the Priestley Medal, ACS's highest award, in 1960.

Dr. Brode was a member of nu­merous other professional and sci­entific societies, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and editor of several scientific journals. He is survived by his widow and two brothers.

August 19, 1974 C&EN 7