Rubber. XVIth Communication. The Method of A. R. Kemp for the Determination of the Iodine Number of Rubber
Abstract In a communication of Pummerer and Mann in 1929 on the determination of the iodine number of rubber by means of iodine chloride in chloroform solution, Fisher and Gray were erroneously mentioned as the originators of the method, because of the fact that these authors were the first to publish the method in accessible form. The fact was overlooked that Fisher and Gray state in a footnote that the method was not their own but was that of A. R. Kemp of the Bell Telephone Laboratories. We are greatly indebted to Kemp for calling to our attention the error, which also appears in our XIVth Communication. The first paper of Kemp on the subject appeared a year later, and contains precise information. Kemp worked with a solution of iodine chloride in glacial acetic acid and a solution of rubber in carbon disulfide at 0° C., and as long ago as 1927 he showed that rubber obtained by extraction of crepe with petroleum ether (b. p. 35–60° C.), and precipitation with alcohol according to the method of Weber, Caspari and Feuchter, gave very satisfactory iodine numbers of 99.43–99.76 per cent of the theoretical value. At 15–20° C. disturbing effects of substitution occurred.