GRGR(12)NOTES (2)

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

GR.249.35 chemists no longer at the mercy of Nature
GR opens in Pirate's dream, the highest point of
Paleotechnic Phase (the crystal palace at Hyde Park, 1851)
now returning to earth. A new era of science is advanced and
accelerated by war. Faustian impudence achieves a new
plasticity, that includes chemicals for war, for the 60s it
will be Dow's Napalm and Agent Orange, and for WWII,
polymerized substances that here connect Nazism, to the IG
Farben cartel, Shell, and lots of other names whose stocks
are generally held in most mutual funds, pension plans and
insurance products.   

GR.250.4 Strength, Stability and Whiteness
Here, the qualities of polymers are ironically treated as
Nazi graffiti, and are woven in clothes, and lives, as
indistinguishable and perhaps as deceptively as the stated
war aims of World Wars I and II, were by the operations of
the Nazis' Ministry of Public Enlightenment and
Propaganda. The production of documentaries was stimulated
by
World War II. The Nazi government of wartime
Germany used the nationalized film industry to
produce propaganda documentaries.

GR.250.11 sheltering midgets
Pynchon's Midgets? in human anatomy, a dwarf whose bodily
proportions, intelligence, and sexual development
are within the normal range. The diminutive stature,
a racial trait in pygmies, occurs sporadically in
families the rest of whose members are of ordinary
size. The children of midgets are usually of
ordinary height and proportions.

GR.250.17 desired monomer 
a molecule of any of a class of compounds, mostly
organic, that can react with other molecules of the
same or other compound to form very large
molecules, or polymers. The essential feature of a
monomer is polyfunctionality, the capacity to form
chemical bonds to at least two other monomer
molecules. Bifunctional monomers can form only
linear, chainlike polymers, but monomers of higher
functionality yield cross-linked, network polymeric
products. Addition reactions are characteristic of monomers
that contain either a double bond between two
atoms or a ring of from three to seven atoms;
examples include styrene, caprolactam (which
forms nylon-6. 

GR.250.22 just befor the war
This is one example of dating Imipolex G, "One hypothetical
chain that Jamf came up with, just befor the war, was later
modified into Imipolex G." 

GR. 250.23 Psychochemie
Like Dickens, Pynchon sets his fictions-yoyodyne,
psychodontia-next to the real. 

GR.250.24 Grossli Chemical Corporation, Sandoz, Ciba, and
Geigy, Now Novartis A G, and the IG Farben Cartel

Sandoz recently acquired Gerber Foods, so breast-feed your
baby. 
Novartis A G is a Swiss company, one of the world's largest
manufacturers of pharmaceuticals. It was formed in
1997 from the merger of two major Swiss drug
companies, Ciba-Geigy AG and Sandoz AG.
Novartis is headquartered in Basel. 

Ciba-Geigy originated in the merger of two smaller
Swiss firms, Ciba AG and J.R. Geigy SA. Ciba
developed from a silk-dyeing business owned by
Alexander Clavel, who began manufacturing the
synthetic dye fuchsine in 1859. In 1873 he sold his
business to a partnership, Bindschedler & Busch,
which expanded the range of dyestuffs produced. In
1884 the firm was transformed into a
limited-liability company called the Gesellschaft
für Chemische Industrie Basel ("Society of
Chemical Industry in Basel"), the last words of
which produced the acronym Ciba, which became
its familiar name. (In 1945 the company's name
legally became Ciba AG.) In addition to dyes, Ciba
became known for pharmaceuticals, which it began
making in 1900. By then it had become the largest
chemical company in Switzerland. 

Geigy dates to 1758, when Johann Rudolf Geigy set
up shop in Basel as a chemist and druggist; his son
and grandson branched into dyes for the textile
industry. In 1868 the founder's great-grandson,
Johann Rudolf Geigy-Merian, assumed command,
creating a flourishing dyestuff company that went
public in 1901 and was named J.R. Geigy SA in
1914. In the 1930s and '40s it branched out into
agricultural chemicals and pharmaceuticals. One of
Geigy's researchers, Paul Müller, won a Nobel
Prize in 1948 for discovering the insecticidal
properties of DDT. 

Sandoz AG originated in 1886, when Alfred Kern
and Edouard Sandoz founded a firm in Basel to
make synthetic dyes. The new firm, Chemische
Fabrik Kern & Sandoz ("Chemical Company Kern
& Sandoz"), grew rapidly, and in 1895, the year it
began making pharmaceuticals, it was transformed
into a joint-stock company called Chemische Fabrik
vormals Sandoz ("Chemical Company formerly
Sandoz"). In the 1920s and '30s it began making
cleaning agents and other household products. 

Ciba, Geigy, and Sandoz collectively constituted
the entire chemical industry of Switzerland. In 1918
the three companies joined together to form a cartel,
the Interessengemeinschaft Basel ("Basel
Syndicate"), or Basel IG, in order to compete with
the German chemical cartel IG Farben. All three
companies also established or acquired factories in
various European countries and in the United
States. In 1929-32 the Basel IG joined with IG
Farben and French and British chemical firms to
form the Quadrapartite Cartel, which lasted until
the outbreak of World War II in 1939. Though each
participant in the cartel retained its legal autonomy,
the companies by signed agreement entered into a
division of markets and some joint manufacturing.
Basel IG survived the war, but it dissolved in 1951
partly out of regard for U.S. antitrust legislation. 

All three Swiss companies prospered and
continued to diversify in the decades after World
War II. Sandoz earned notoriety in the 1960s for one of its
inventions, a
potent hallucinogen called LSD.