Done with Mirrors

When famed German Chemist Baron Justus von Liebig made the first modern mirror 105 years ago, he poured his new silvering solution from a laboratory beaker on a pane of glass, gave humanity the best look at itself it had ever had.* He also left a formula which U. S. manufacturers used last year, little changed, to turn out some $50,000,000 worth of mirrors for thousands of uses from microscopes to cocktail bars. The curious fact about the industry was that it had never been able to make a substantial improvement on Liebig's method. In most of the 500 U. S. plants, workmen with porcelain pitchers tediously hand-poured the liquid on flat plates of glass, had to wait a half-hour or more for the solution (silver ammonium nitrate and Rochelle Epsom salts) to deposit its silver.

Off a train at Tangerine, Fla., one day last week, climbed a seamy-faced, balding Philadelphia chemist named William Peacock. He was on his first vacation in ten years and he figured he had it coming to him. For since his last holidays Chemist Peacock had tried thousands of formulas to modernize Liebig's process, and he had finally succeeded. Before he left his one-story Colonial laboratory on Philadelphia's Main Line his process was in use in three big mirror plants (Nurre; Binswanger & Co.; Hires Turner), and he had visions of some day putting a full-length mirror on every bedroom door.

For years after he left the U. S. Navy in 1919, Chemist Peacock worked unsuccessfully on a process to prevent tarnishing of silverware. He became the only mirror consultant in the U. S. ten years ago, when Hires Turner called him in to see what was wrong with its silvering solution. Amazed was William Peacock at pitcher-pouring. So he went to work on a new process, managed to support his Peacock Laboratories meanwhile by supplying advice, standardized silvering solution, special rubber gloves and other mirror-making accessories to the trade. Near last year's end he found the answer, a speedier solution (his trade secret) to replace Epsom salts as a reducing agent. With the new solution he could silver a mirror in 57 seconds, instead of over half an hour. Better still, the solution could be blown on by an air gun. With his process, mirror-makers could throw away their pitchers and work on a high-speed assembly line. Few weeks ago big Libbey-Owens-Ford Glass Co. bought Peacock Laboratories, lock, stock & barrel, announced that Chemist Peacock would stay on as president.

*Roman courtesans squinted at their reflections in polished silver, bronze. Louis XIV's mistresses had tin-and-mercury-backed mirrors at Versailles Palace.

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