Chronology of Chemical Information Science
CHRONOLOGY OF CHEMICAL INFORMATION SCIENCE*
Compiled by Robert V. Williams, College of Library and Information Science, University of South Carolina; Garfield Fellow in the History of Scientific Information, Chemical Heritage Foundation
and
Mary Ellen Bowden, Senior Research Historian, Chemical Heritage Foundation
This content was developed by Laird Whitmire, Graduate Assistant, Chemical Heritage Foundation, and Robert V. Williams, Prof., College of Library and Information Science, University of South Carolina.
CHRONOLOGY OF CHEMICAL INFORMATION SCIENCE (BY DATE)
INTRODUCTION
Communication among researchers is crucial in any science. It enables colleagues in the field to replicate and criticize findings, as well as to incorporate them into new work. At least since the days of Robert Boyle (1627-1691), a founder of the Royal Society and in his lifetime its most notable and influential fellow, chemical scientists have been at the forefront of efforts to facilitate and expedite such communication. As science has become ever larger and more complex and the technologies of information storage and retrieval more advanced, these scientists have had to develop and refine specialized information systems to meet their research needs.
SOCIETIES, CONFERENCES, AND JOURNALS
Gathering together for talks and demonstrations is one of the oldest means of communication, and it remains important to this day. The Royal Society and other academies formalized this tradition in the seventeenth century by holding such meetings in the same place at regular intervals.
Many scientists regularly communicated their results to one another by private letters or through mutually trusted scientific correspondents or “intelligencers” like the Parisian cleric, Marin Mersenne (1588-1648). The Royal Society’s secretary, Henry Oldenburg (~1618-77), served a similar function in gathering scientific intelligence from all over Britain, its colonies, and the Continent. Excerpts from these letters along with accounts of demonstrations before the Royal Society were printed up regularly as the Philosophical Transactions, thus giving birth to the scientific paper.
This chronology begins in the eighteenth century as scientists became sufficiently specialized and numerous to support journals and found societies limited to a single field, such as chemistry. Even more specialized chemical journals and societies continue to be founded, but space limitations require us to include only those from countries most active in chemistry and only the first chemical organization established in each country.
In the latter part of the nineteenth century, railroads and transoceanic steamships made feasible the international conferences that have proved so critical to an international system of chemical information. Another organizational development has been the founding in the last fifty years or so of societies to fill the needs of chemical information professionals themselves. Preeminent among such societies is the American Chemical Society’s (ACS) Division of Chemical Information, founded in 1948 as the Division of Chemical Literature.
NOMENCLATURE, SYMBOLS, AND STRUCTURAL DIAGRAMS
Chemical words, symbols, and structures, as published in journal articles and reference works, have remained the major focus of science information systems. But by the eighteenth century, the disorganized state of chemical nomenclature was recognized as a major obstacle to the field’s progress. Chemistry’s diverse roots in alchemy, pharmacy, and metallurgy had left it with a confusing and inconsistent collection of names and symbols for substances and with several conflicting ways of describing their composition. Chemists like Antoine Lavoisier made groundbreaking efforts to reform this situation. Investigations into atomic and molecular structure in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries presented chemical scientists with further problems of representation.
Lavoisier and his followers well recognized that language and symbol help shape our views of reality. Continuing changes in our understanding of chemical composition and structure have ensured that nomenclature and symbolic conventions remain an issue to the present day.
ABSTRACTS, REVIEWS, COMPILATIONS, AND INDEXES STORED AND RETRIEVED MANUALLY
This proliferation of discoveries, societies, and journals devoted to them posed both opportunities and challenges. By the nineteenth century, the amount of material published each year had grown too large for a single person to read. A variety of aids digested and presented the new knowledge in accessible forms allowing chemical scientists to limit their reading to topics that they found useful and to obtain shorter versions of articles that might warrant a full reading at a later time. The very first chemistry journal, Lorenz von Crell’s Chemisches Journal (1778), carried abstracts of foreign literature, and Thomas Thomson’s Annals of Philosophy (1814) included an annual review of chemical progress. The first chemistry-related journal just for abstracts was published as Pharmaceutisches Centralblatt in 1830 and soon began to cover all chemistry. By 1859, a weekly chemical periodical had appeared.
Also during the nineteenth century, compilations like Beilstein, Gmelin, and the Pharmacopoeia of the United States supplied chemists with easily accessible basic information and citations for nearly all known compounds. Beilstein published the first formula index in 1899 and the first index to permit substructure searching in 1918. All these aids to research required armies of workers writing notes on thousands of pieces of paper or index cards and coding and sorting them appropriately.
The need of scientists to have access to worldwide and interdisciplinary sources of knowledge has resulted in numerous cooperative efforts. In 1911 Wilhelm Ostwald funded and actively promoted a scheme to organize and make accessible all knowledge to such intellectuals (and chemists) as Svante Arrhenius and Ernst Solvay. The “Bridge movement” and a special institute that Ostwald planned to document the field of chemistry did not progress very far. But two institutions with nearly contemporaneous origins, the Chemical Abstracts Service growing out of the ACS’s Chemical Abstracts (1907) and the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (1919), were quite successful in the long run in standardizing and organizing the dissemination of chemical information worldwide. Ultimately they were aided by the growth of English as the standard textual language of international scientific publication and by new technologies that made possible automated means of storing, retrieving, and exchanging information.
ABSTRACTS, REVIEWS, COMPILATIONS, AND INDEXES STORED AND RETRIEVED USING MECHANICAL OR ELECTROMECHANICAL SORTERS
Mechanical and electromechanical sorting of punched and edge-notched cards constituted a revolution in information handling comparable to the introduction of card catalogs in the 1870s and 1880s. In the 1930s Watson Davis successfully used microfilm to distribute scientific literature, but efforts to combine it with mechanized retrieval were not successful. After World War II, however, new machines allowed sorters to construct both traditional and new reference materials with greater speed and accuracy. Jobs that were formerly prohibitively time-consuming now became practical.
Associated with the punched-card revolution in information technology were a number of machine-compatible techniques for dealing with chemical notation. Among the latter were linear means of indicating chemical structures, such as G. Malcolm Dyson’s (1946) and William J. Wiswesser’s (1949) notation systems, and ways of breaking up and tabulating structures that could be coded for use in a machine, such as Hoechst’s fragment code GREMAS (1957) and the work of Jacques-Emile DuBois (1954), Donald J. Gluck and Harry L. Morgan (1962), and others on tabular reproduction of structural formulas. The task of converting chemical names into molecular formulas or structures, previously reserved for chemical cognoscenti, was broken up into multiple small steps that a machine could perform.
The field rapidly progressed from chemical literature to chemical documentation to chemical information. Where once the practitioners were literature chemists or chemical librarians, now a new generation of information scientists with both chemical and machine expertise was required to deal with the large volume of chemical information. They began to develop special devices and indexing approaches to sort and search multiple access points to the chemical literature. New concepts like Calvin Mooers’s descriptors and superimposed coding (1948), Mortimer Taube’s Uniterms (1950) and coordinate indexing (1951), and Hans Peter Luhn and Herbert Ohlman’s KWIC system (1958) aided in this endeavor. In 1951, at the Sharp and Dohme library, Claire Schultz employed Mooers’s superimposed coding and the Remington Rand card sorter to perform chemistry searches, and at Johns Hopkins University’s Welch Medical Library, Eugene Garfield successfully used the IBM punched-card sorter to search the Current List of Medical Literature.
ABSTRACTS, REVIEWS, COMPILATIONS, AND INDEXES STORED AND RETRIEVED USING ELECTRONIC COMPUTERS
As science information experts began to turn to electronic computers with stored programs in the late 1950s, they drew upon a wealth of machine processing experience and exciting new ideas. For more than a decade, technologies overlapped. A wide variety of information retrieval systems were introduced and refined using electromechanical devices and later implemented on electronic computers as they became more readily available. The first computer-produced periodical, Chemical Titles (1960), which used punched cards and the KWIC indexing system, is an example of the changes beginning to affect chemical information science. Meanwhile, specialized devices for inputting chemical structures into computers were patented, and topological coding of structures and transcoding algorithms were developed.
Second-generation transistorized electronic computers caused a revolution in chemical information processing and retrieval. Their magnetic storage systems—first tape and later disk drives—allowed large-scale databases that could be shared with other sites or searched in batch (off-line) mode and the results provided to users. As chemical literature grew exponentially, chemical scientists began to talk seriously about a worldwide chemical information system. Database developers like Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) began to explore cooperative ventures, within the United States and overseas, both to create information products and to provide access to them. Public agencies, like the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), began to support ventures such as CAS’s Chemical Registry System, both funding them and using them to meet their own scientific needs. An example of international cooperation was the transfer of CAS connectivity tables into the French DARC topological database.
Developments in telecommunications in the late 1960s and early 1970s aided the shift to online searching and retrieval from these databases. Commercial online database vendors, such as DIALOG and ORBIT (1965), sought access to these databases eagerly and marketed them to libraries, corporate information centers, and individual researchers. These sophisticated chemical information databases included not just bibliographic citations but also patents, chemical properties, structural details, crystallographic and spectroscopic data, and much more. Supplementing online searching were floppy disks and magnetic tapes, CD-ROMs, and specialized file transfer protocol files.
Expertise in searching became essential for the chemical information specialists, but they still had to contend with terminology and language problems, database coverage, and the changing nature of chemistry. Chemical information scientists saw the need to systematically readdress notational and structural conventions and their implications for machine processing. They also established a whole new way of utilizing databases in terms of chemical reactions. Subsequent developments in computer hardware and software made possible other innovations, including the use of computer graphics to create three-dimensional models of molecules. Research programs to address these areas were developed at academic institutions (such as Sheffield University’s Postgraduate School of Librarianship and the master’s degree program in chemical information at the University of Paris) and in the private sector (such as Molecular Design Ltd.).
INTERNET
While the revolutions in computer processing speeds and online searching significantly aided scientific communication, they did not address the scientists’ need to share tentative ideas and results while at work on a particular problem. Letters, meetings, informal technical reports, and telephone calls (the conventional methods of communicating about work in progress) were slow, expensive, or both. “Snail mail” was not good enough.
In the late 1960s the U.S. government began funding an effort to ease communication between scientists engaged in defense work. ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) was established in 1969 to demonstrate how communications between computers could promote cooperative research among scientists. This precursor to the Internet was very successful, but access was quite limited until 1983, when the NSF began funding it as the INTERNET (Interactive Network). In 1986 it established its own network, NSFNET, to connect supercomputing centers. Academic institutions soon followed, establishing their own networks for communicating with each other via electronic mail and file transfer systems.
Rapid improvements in the 1990s in software, computer processing speeds and storage capacity, and telecommunications links made the Internet a worldwide system. International cooperative efforts for the sharing of scientific data via the Internet, such as initiatives undertaken by the Committee on Data for Science and Technology (1966) of the International Council of Scientific Unions, have greatly enhanced the value and importance of the Internet to scientific communication. Now scientists almost anywhere in the world can communicate rapidly and completely about their research and search and retrieve scientific literature from large and complex international databases from their desktops.
Are the Internet and World Wide Web and the accessibility of sophisticated chemical information databases the ultimate fulfillment of the needs and dreams of chemical investigators and information experts? Probably not. The vast quantity of material, inadequate indexing and retrieval mechanisms, and the lack of content refereeing, continue to challenge chemical information scientists. Nevertheless, we eagerly anticipate the future.
This Chronology of Chemical Information Science was created to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the founding in 1948 of the Chemical Information Division of the American Chemical Society. It will also be distributed at The History and Heritage of Science Information Systems, the first international conference on this subject (23-25 October 1998), which will be co-sponsored by the Chemical Heritage Foundation and the American Society for Information Science.
And we hope that our chronology will continue to inspire more investigations by historians–professional and amateur alike–in the little explored territory of science information. Potential topics for research abound at the science-technology interface and in sciences as apparently disparate as chemistry, mathematics, and linguistics; the interaction of professional organizations, government agencies, and private entrepreneurs; and comparisons–over time and nationality–of the very fundamentals of information systems–what information is considered important, who decides, and who has access to the system.
Through the generosity of the Eugene Garfield Foundation, Robert V. Williams, professor at the College of Library and Information Science, University of South Carolina, has been associated with the Chemical Heritage Foundation as Garfield Fellow in the History of Scientific Information. Dr. Williams spent part of his time as our first Garfield Fellow drawing up this chronology. It is a component of a far more ambitious project recording the history of scientific information that he had launched on his own with the support of the American Society for Information Science. This project includes a comprehensive bibliography and oral histories of selected pioneers in information science.
Mary Ellen Bowden, senior research historian at the Chemical Heritage Foundation, enthusiastically lent her considerable skills as an historian of science to aspects of Dr. Williams work, especially in co-authoring this chronology. Ted Benfey, editor-at-large for Chemical Heritage Foundation (who was writing about the phenomenal growth of the chemical literature as early as 1961) read drafts in his usual diligent way. It is also through the generosity of the Eugene Garfield Foundation that the publication costs of this chronology have been underwritten.
Our advisory panel played an invaluable role in constructing this chronology, especially since so little of a retrospective nature has been written about recent developments in information science. Of our advisers, W. V. (“Val”) Metanomski (History Committee of the ACS’s Chemical Information Division and Chemical Abstracts Service) was consulted earliest and most frequently. It was at his suggestion that we called upon colleagues overseas to give a more international aspect to the record.
Errors and omissions should not, however, be attributed to these kind people but, rather, brought to our attention. In that way, future work can build on this pioneering attempt at covering a very broad landscape.
Ted Benfey
Chemical Heritage Foundation
Michael Buckland
American Society for Information Science
School of Information Management and Systems
University of California, Berkeley
Hideaki Chihara
Japan Association for International Chemical Information
Jacques-Emile Dubois
Institut de Topologie et Dynamique des Systemes
Université Paris VII – CNRS
Ekkehard Fluck
Gmelin-Institut
Eugene Garfield
Institute for Scientific Information
Nigel Lees
Royal Society of Chemistry
Alan D. McNaught
Royal Society of Chemistry
W. V. Metanomski
Chemical Abstracts Service
ACS’s Chemical Information Division
James E. Rush
Palinet
Wendy A. Warr
Wendy Warr and Associates
Peter Willett
Department of Information Studies
University of Sheffield
Brock, William. “The Chemical News.” In The Norton History of Chemistry. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1992.
Crosland, Maurice P. Historical Studies in the Language of Chemistry. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962.
Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology, 4th ed. s.v. “information retrieval.” New York: Wiley , 1993-98.
Metanomski, W. V. 50 Years of Chemical Information in the American Chemical Society, 1943-1993. Washington, D.C.: American Chemical Society, Division of Chemical Information, 1993.
Schulz, Hedda and Ursula Georgy. From CA to CAS Online: Databases in Chemistry, 2nd ed. New York: Springer Verlag, 1994.
Skolnik, Herman. “Milestones in Chemical Information Science: Award Symposium on contributions of the Division of Chemical Literature to the Chemical Society.” Journal of Chemical Information and Computer Science 16 (1976):187-193.
Weisgerber, David W. “Chemical Abstracts Service Chemical Registry System: History, Scope, and Impacts.” Journal of the American Society for Information Science 48 (1997):349-360.
The Classic Chemistry website at LeMoyne College, Department of Chemistry
Includes:
- Classic chemistry papers
- This Week in the History of Chemistry
- Glossary of Archaic Chemical Terms
Site: https://web.lemoyne.edu/giunta/
American Chemical Society, Division of Chemical Information (CINF) Historical Information
Includes:
- Skolnik Award Winners
- CINF 50th Anniversary Historical Milestones
- CINF Officers, 1949-present
Site: http://www.acscinf.org/
Chronology of Chemical Information Science--By Date
1778
- Chemisches Journal, thought to be the first chemical journal, is established by Lorenz von Crell. Published 1778-84, subsequently renamed Chemische Annalen and published 1784-1803. It already included some abstracts.
1787
- Méthode de Nomenclature Chimique, by Louis Bernard Guyton de Morveau, Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, Claude Louis Berthollet, and Antoine François de Fourcroy, is published in Paris. Created from Greek and Latin roots, the nomenclature system represents what Lavoisier’s followers understand about the composition of hundreds of substances.
1789
- Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, Louis Bernard, Guyton de Moreau, Claude Louis Berthollet, and Antoin François de Fourcroy establish the Annales de chimie.
- Short-lived Chemical Society of Philadelphia is founded and subsequently publishes its transactions.
1813
- Jöns Jakob Berzelius proposes a system of chemical symbols in which elements are represented by the first letters of their names. Compounds are represented by these letters with superscripts indicating combining weights, which in turn suggest the number of atoms combining.
1814
- Thomas Thomson begins an annual retrospective review of chemical literature in his Annals of Philosophy, a practice later adopted by other editors like Berzelius.
1817
- Leopold Gmelin publishes first edition of his Handbuch der Anorganischen Chemie.
1820
- The Pharmacopoeia of the United States is published, establishing standard English and Latin names for drugs.
1830
- In Germany Pharmaceutisches Centralblatt is issued as the first chemistry-related abstracts journal. Becomes Chemisches-Pharmaceutisches Centralblatt in 1850 and Chemisches Zentralblatt in 1856. The Deutsche Chemische Gesellschaft assumes responsibility for publication in 1897.
1832
- Justus Liebig acquires Annalen der Pharmacie. Name later changes to Justus Liebigs Annalen der Chemie and, most recently, to European Journal of Organic Chemistry.
1841
- The Chemical Society of London is established.
1847
- Quarterly Journal of the Chemical Society of London (later, Journal of the Chemical Society) is first published. In 1871 it begins including abstracts of the chemical literature.
1848
- The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is founded. It includes a section devoted to chemistry.
1857
- The Société Chimique de Paris is established. Begins publication of Bulletin as well as Répertoire de chimie pure and Répertoire de chimie appliquée, which include abstracts.
1858
- In a published outline of a chemistry course, Stanislao Cannizzaro clarifies the calculation of atomic weights, then a highly contentious subject, using, in part, the long-neglected hypothesis put forward by Amedeo Avagadro in 1811.
- Friedrich August Kekule and Archibald Scott Couper recognize that carbon atoms have the ability to link to one another in chains.
- Archibald Scott Couper uses straight lines to indicate valence bonds in organic compounds, as is still the practice in most modern structural diagrams.
1859
- Chemical News and Journal of Physical Science (with which is incorporated the Chemical Gazette), the first weekly chemistry periodical, is published in England. It continues to be published until 1932.
1860
- Congress is held at Karlsruhe Technische Hochschule to discuss the feasibility of establishing a systematic and rational nomenclature for chemistry. The congress does not reach any conclusive results, but several key participants return home with Stanislao Cannizzaro’s outline (1858), which ultimately convinces them of the validity of his scheme for calculating atomic weights.
1865
- Friedrich August Kekule, as well as others including Josef Loschmidt, identifies the ring structure of benzene.
1867
- The Deutsche Chemische Gesellschaft is established. Begins publication of its journal, Berichte.
- The Royal Society begins publication of its Catalogue of Papers in London.
1868
- The Rossiskoe Khimicheskoe Obschestvo (now Russko Khimichesko Obschestvo) is established in Russia. Begins publication of a journal the following year.
1869
- Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev publishes a periodic table of the elements organized by atomic weight, similar chemical and physical characteristics, and valence.
1870
- Julius Lothar Meyer publishes a periodic table similar to Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev’s that he has been developing since 1864.
1871
- Societa Chimia Italiana is established in Italy. Begins publication of a journal the same year.
1873
- Jacobus Henricus van’t Hoff and Joseph Achille LeBel’s recognition that there are two ways of arranging four unlike substituents tetrahedrally around a carbon atom marks the beginning ofthree-dimensional structural organic chemistry and the associated problem of representing these structures graphically and, much later, in a machine-readable code.
1876
- American Chemical Society (ACS) is formed in New York City and publishes first proceedings.
1878
- Kagaku-kai is established in Tokyo and, two years later, publishes its journal in Japanese; in 1921, becomes Nippon Kagaku-kai.
1879
- ACS commences publication of the Journal of the American Chemical Society, including abstracts of foreign journals.
- Index Medicus is first issued by the Library of the Surgeon General, U.S. Army; John Shaw Billings, librarian.
1881
- Friedrich Beilstein issues the first edition of his Handbuch der Organischen Chemie, a ready reference to fifteen hundred organic chemicals.
1882
- AAAS Committee on Indexing Chemical Literature is established.
- London’s Chemical Society publishes Nomenclature and Notation, guidelines for establishing systematic and uniform practices.
1884
- Lexicon der Kohlenstoffverbindungen, a formula index to Beilsteins Handbuch der Organischen Chemie, is published by Victor von Richter.
- Journal of the Association of Engineering Societies begins abstracting section, “Index Notes,” covering about one hundred journals in the field of engineering. Becomes Engineering Index in 1896.
- ACS establishes the Committee on Nomenclature and Notation.
1889
- First edition of Merck Index is published; at first it is just a list of chemicals and drugs available from Merck & Co.
1892
- Geneva conference establishes principles that set the stage for an evolving chemical nomenclature. These principles are developed more fully by various forerunners of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), which is founded in 1919.
1893
- AAAS Committee on Indexing Chemical Literature presents plans for an international index to the chemical literature.
1895
- First U.S. venture in chemical abstracting, the Review of American Chemical Research (a supplement to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Technology Quarterly), undertaken by Arthur A. Noyes. In 1897 it is incorporated into the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
- Alfred Werner introduces a systematic nomenclature for coordination compounds based on the groups surrounding a central metal atom.
1900
- Edwin A. Hill publishes his system for ordering molecular formulas in an index. It is first used by the Classification Division of the U.S. Patent Office.
1907
- First issue of Chemical Abstracts (CA) is published, edited by William A. Noyes, Sr., in the United States, using volunteers as abstractors (a continuing tradition in CA until the 1960s).
1908
- American Institute of Chemical Engineers is founded and begins publication of its transactions.
1909
- Austin M. Patterson, professor at Ohio State University, assumes editorship of CA, and its offices are moved from the University of Illinois at Urbana to Columbus.
1911
- Wilhelm Ostwald founds Die Brücke, an international institute for the organization of intellectual work, but fails in his attempt to establish a special international institute to document the field of chemistry.
1917
- Editor Evan J. Crane publishes first CA decennial index (1907-16), which includes a new means of naming and indexing compounds developed by Austin M. Patterson and Carleton C. Curran.
1918
- The Beilsteins Handbuch der Organischen Chemie makes possible substructure searching.
1920
- Chemical Abstracts adds annual formula index, first to be used in an abstract journal. These formula indexes did not indicate molecular structures, or functional groups, but served as very broad screens for searching purposes.
1921
- International Union of Pure Applied Chemistry establishes commissions on chemical nomenclature to formulate rules for naming chemical compounds systematically.
1924
- Eighth edition of Gmelin Handbuch der Anorganischen Chemie is published, under sponsorship of Deutsche Chemische Gesellschaft.
1926
- British Chemical Abstracts begins. Becomes British Chemical and Physiological Abstracts in 1938 and British Abstracts in 1946.
- In the United States Biological Abstracts is first published.
1927
- Nippon Kagaku Soran, a Japanese chemical abstracts journal, is published.
1934
- Samuel C. Bradford, mathematician and librarian at the Science Museum in London, develops his “law of scattering” regarding differences in demand for scientific journals. This work influences bibliometrics and citation analysis of scientific publications.
1935
- A $15,000 grant from the Chemical Foundation allows Watson Davis to establish the Documentation Institute as part of Science Service and to operate the Auxiliary Publication Service for science librarians. These initiatives lead indirectly to the establishment, in 1937, of the American Documentation Institute, the predecessor of the American Society for Information Science.
1938
- Conrad Weygand, a German chemist, proposes a method for classifying chemical reactions based on the breaking and forming of bonds during a reaction.
1939
- France’s Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique is established with chemical information science among its fields of research.
1940
- The Ring Index, by Austin M. Patterson and Leonard T. Capell, is first published.
- Bulletin Signalétique, a French abstract journal, is first published.
1942
- National Registry of Rare Chemicals established by the Armour Research Foundation in Chicago.
1943
- Technical Library Techniques Symposium is held at an ACS meeting, and the Chemical Literature Group is formed as part of the Division of Chemical Education.
1945
- Article by Gerald J. Cox, Charles F. Baily, and Robert S. Casey in Chemical and Engineering News, “Punched Cards for a Chemical Bibliography,” is first to bring punched cards to attention of chemists.
1946
- ACS board establishes a Board Committee on Punched Cards, with James W. Perry as chairman. The committee’s activities are financially supported by the ACS with additional funds solicited from industry. Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Scientific Aids to Learning continues this work with a grant from the Carnegie Corporation.
- Chemical Biological Coordination Center (CBCC) is established in the U.S. National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council. Begins punched-card system to organize complex information files.
- The Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker is founded, replacing the Deutsche Chemische Gesellschaft and the Verein Deutscher Chemiker.
- G. Malcolm Dyson presents a paper before London’s Royal Institute of Chemistry on his notation system, which seeks to represent chemical structures uniquely and unambiguously in a linear sequence of letters and numbers. IUPAC provisionally recommends the Dyson system.
- USDA Library offers to furnish copies of all articles cited in CA to subscribers and members of the ACS. Project is halted in 1956 because of copyright issues.
1947
- Preparation of the CA fourth decennial index (covering 1937-46) requires 1.6 million index cards, five miles of one-column galley proofs, and several years to produce.
- First volume of first edition of Kirk-Othmer Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology is published.
- William E. Batten, Imperial Chemical Industries in Great Britain, reports on the use of optical coincidence cards for information retrieval.
1948
- ACS’s Division of Chemical Literature is formed and the next year begins publication of Chemical Literature. In 1975 name changes to Division of Chemical Information.
- Gmelin-Institut für Anorganische Chemie und Grenzgebiete of the Max-Planck Institut commences editing and publishing Gmelin Handbuch.
- Welch Medical Library Indexing Project at Johns Hopkins University begins. Sponsored by the Army Medical Library (now the National Library of Medicine), it is one of the first efforts to study medical and chemical nomenclature and indexing and to apply machine technologies to this information.
- Royal Society Scientific Information Conference convenes in London.
- James W. Perry and G. Malcolm Dyson discuss with Thomas J. Watson, IBM president, the need to develop a machine to handle large volumes of scientific information, particularly chemical information. Watson agrees to work on the problem and assigns Hans Peter Luhn to the project.
- Calvin Mooers develops concept of Zatocoding, using “descriptors” and random coding on mechanically sorted edge-notched cards.
1949
- Austin M. Patterson receives first A.M. Patterson Award for Documentation in Chemistry from ACS’s Dayton Section. In 1975 the award is expanded to honor E.J. Crane and becomes the Patterson-Crane Award.
- George Willard Wheland, professor at the University of Chicago, develops basic concept of the connection table to represent chemical structures.
- William J. Wiswesser introduces Wiswesser Line Notation.
1950
- Hans Peter Luhn develops prototype of the Luhn Scanner for IBM. Its technology is based on IBM punched cards, run vertically through a specially adapted scanner, using photo-electric cells. It does not require fixed-field searching. It is first demonstrated at the World Chemical Conclave in New York City, September 1951.
- The Information for Industry Index to U.S. Patents (IFI/Plenum) begins publication using Mortimer Taube’s Uniterm system for index terms.
1951
- Mortimer Taube and Alberto F. Thompson of the AEC Technical Information Service present “The Coordinate Indexing of Scientific Fields” before the Symposium on Mechanical Aids to Chemical Documentation sponsored by the ACS’s Division of Chemical Literature. This paper contains the first use of the term coordinate indexing.
- James W. Perry and Robert S. Casey publish Punched Cards: Their Application to Science and Industry. A second edition appeared in 1958 with Madeline Berry and Allen Kent as co-authors.
- At Johns Hopkins University’s Welch Medical Library, Eugene Garfield develops machine methods for compiling Current List of Medical Literature (later merged with Index Medicus) and applies the IBM 101 punched-card sorter to search this database.
- At Sharp and Dohme, Claire Schultz employs Calvin Mooers’s superimposed coding and the Remington Rand punched-card sorter to perform chemistry searches.
- In Great Britain, Derwent Publications, Ltd., begins patent abstracting services with Central Patents Index. Punched cards are used to construct the indexes.
1952
- Karl Heumann and Raimon Beard report on the U.S. National Research Council’s Chemical-Biological Coordination Center survey of the use of punched cards, classification systems, etc. in documenting work in the chemistry and biology fields.
- The Institute of Scientific Information is established at the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Moscow and in the following year begins publication of Referativnyi Zhurnal, Khimiya, a chemical abstracting journal. In 1955 the institute becomes the All-Soviet Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (VINITI), the centralized abstracting and indexing service for all scientific fields.
- National Research Council issues a call for the comparative study of the best notation systems for structural formulas.
1954
- In France, Jacques-Emile Dubois does initial work on the DARC (Description, Acquisition, Retrieval, and Correlation) system.
1955
- Chemical Abstract Services (CAS) establishes research and development unit.
1956
- Robert Cahn, Christopher Ingold, and Vladimir Prelog present a nomenclature system for the unambiguous specification of stereoisomers.
1957
- International Union of Pure Applied Chemistry approves rules for chemical nomenclature that are subsequently issued in book form–the famous Red, Blue, and Green Books, dealing with inorganic, organic, and physical chemistry, respectively.
- Eugene Garfield Associates, Inc., begins project with Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association to scan and index the current literature on steroid compounds. The coding sheets produced are then used by the U.S. Patent Office to make punched cards for searching by patent examiners to find current literature. This project leads indirectly to Index Chemicus.
- Robert Fugmann and co-workers at Farbwerke Hoechst, West Germany, develop Generic Retrieval by Magnetic Tape Storage (GREMAS), a high-performance fragmentation coding, storage, and retrieval system for low molecular weight organic compounds.
1958
- U.S. Patent Office and National Bureau of Standards develop the experimental HAYSTAQ (Have You Stored Answers to Questions) system using a Standards Electronic Automatic Computer (SEAC) for use in searching patent files, with particular focus on chemical information.
- International Conference on Scientific Information (ICSI) is held in Washington, D.C.
- National Federation of Science Abstracting and Indexing Services is founded. In 1972 it becomes National Federation of Abstracting and Indexing Services.
- Kagaku Gijutsu Bunken Sokuho (Alerting Service of Scientific and Technical Information) by Japan Information Center for Science and Technology is published. Covers world science literature.
- Hans Peter Luhn (IBM) and Herbert Ohlman (System Development Corporation) display first key word in context (KWIC) indexes at ICSI.
- Eugene Garfield Associates publishes first issues of Current Contents/Life Sciences, covering life sciences, pharmacy, and chemistry in a format that was prototyped in 1952. Garfield also begins work on his algorithm for converting chemical names into molecular formulas.
- Beilsteins Handbuchadopts CIP (for Cahn, Ingold, Prelog). CIP is now used nearly universally.
1959
- Ascher Opler (Dow Chemical Company) reports on the use of a light pen for graphical entry of chemical structures into a computer.
1960
- CAS and the Union of American Biological Societies (later, its information service known as BIOSIS–BioSciences Information Service of Biological Abstracts) agree to exchange abstracting services to avoid duplication of efforts.
- U.S. National Science Foundation begins funding research and development on new information handling projects at CAS, then led by Dale B. Baker, director, who is soon joined by Fred A. Tate, director of the research department. These projects include the Chemical Registry and a comprehensive national computerized chemical information system. By 1974 this funding exceeds $23 million.
- Institute for Scientific Information, formerly Eugene Garfield Associates, publishes first issues of Index Chemicus (briefly called Current Abstracts of Chemistry), a monthly alerting service to new chemical compounds and reactions. It features a computer-based molecular formula index constructed from chemical names.
- CAS publishes first five monthly samples of Chemical Titles (CT ); bi-weekly issues begin in 1961. CT is first periodical to be organized, indexed, and composed almost completely by computer and to use Hans Peter Luhn’s KWIC method.
1961
- American Institute of Chemical Engineers publishes Chemical Engineering Thesaurus, derived from the DuPont Technical Information Thesaurus, developed by Mortimer Taube as a consultant to the Du Pont Company’s Engineering Information Center.
1962
- Based on earlier work done by Donald J. Gluck and colleagues at DuPont, CAS’s Harry L. Morgan develops an algorithm to translate two-dimensional structural diagrams into a tabular form (or connection table) that can be manipulated and searched via computer. This algorithm becomes fundamental to the CAS Chemical Registry System.
- Robert E. Maizell (Olin Corp.) and Charles N. Rice (Eli Lilly) begin using CAS tapes to produce in-house alerting service for chemists. Similar program is developed for students by Purdue University at about the same time.
1963
- George E. Vladutz, a Soviet chemist, enunciates the basic idea for a computerized retrieval system for chemical reactions.
- With funding from the U.S. National Institutes of Health, Institute for Scientific Information publishes the first issue of Genetics Citation Index (GCI) and the prototype of Science Citation Index (SCI), relying on computer indexing. While GCI is not continued, SCI is first offered commercially in 1964.
- MEDLARS (Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System), an off-line batch service, begins operation from the National Library of Medicine.
- University of Sheffield Postgraduate School of Librarianship and Information Science is founded and two years later begins extensive research program in computerized retrieval methods for chemical and textual databases.
- Walter Reed Army Institute of Research develops the Army Chemical Typewriter, which enables the input of chemical structures to a computer using a paper tape punching machine.
1964
- CAS inaugurates Experimental Chemical Registry System, assigning unique numbers to each new substance.
- Meyer Mike Kessler, of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, develops Technical Information Project (TIP), an experimental online searching system.
- Douglas Engelbart develops the mouse as an input device. Used shortly thereafter for manipulation of chemical structures in input and searching at the Lister Hill Center of the National Institutes of Health.
1965
- Subsidized by grants from the U.S. National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense, and the Office of Science and Technology, CAS Chemical Registry System begins. At first the system is only available for use in-house at CAS.
- CAS offers batch (off-line) access to users of the Chemical Titles file.
- CAS provides online searching of its structure files for the National Cancer Institute.
- Computer processing of CA is introduced on a rudimentary scale. CA indexes are running about 22 months behind the close of a volume period at this time.
- Partially funded by National Institutes of Health, Chemical Biological Activities is introduced by CAS. It was published simultaneously in printed form and on computer tape and was the first computer-produced service to include full text, searchable abstracts.
- Imperial Chemical Industries in Great Britain begins work on a project named CROSSBOW (Computerized Retrieval of Organic Structures Based on Wiswesser).
- CAS works with the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and the Food and Drug Administration to develop computer-based substance identification techniques. NLM uses the CAS Registry techniques to develop the Chemical Dictionary Online (CHEMLINE) and Toxicology Information Online (TOXLINE) databases.
- Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre is established by Olga Kennard in the Department of Chemistry at Cambridge University.
- CAS markets microfilms of all abstracts published since 1907.
- Chemical Notation Association is founded in the United States.
1966
- Chemical Society Research Unit in Information Dissemination and Retrieval is established at the University of Nottingham under the directorship of Anthony K. Kent. In 1969, it becomes the U.K. Chemical Information Service.
- The International Council of Scientific Unions establishes the Committee on Data for Science and Technology (CODATA) to improve the quality and accessibility of scientific data collected worldwide.
1967
- West Germany’s Internationale Dokumentationsgesellschaft für Chemie is founded with the cooperation of German chemical companies.
- CAS introduces the hetero-atom-in-context system in its chemical formula index.
1968
- Association of Information and Dissemination Centers is established by various private and public national and international organizations to deal with production, distribution, and use of electronic products and services.
- Information Industry Association is founded by Eugene Garfield, Saul Herner, and others.
- CA Condensates, an alerting service covering the full range of documents abstracted and indexed by CAS, commences. This is the first publicly available computer file to forthcoming issues of CA.
1969
- The U.K. Consortium on Chemical Information, the Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker, and CAS form a partnership to develop and operate a common, computerized information system for chemistry and chemical engineering.
- Great Britain’s Chemical Notation Association is founded.
- Chemisches Zentralblatt ceases publication.
- U.S. Department of Defense implements ARPANET (advanced research projects agency network) to demonstrate how communications between computers could promote cooperative research among scientists.
- Elias J. Corey and W. Todd Wipke of Harvard University develop the OCSS-LHASA (Organic Chemical Synthesis Simulation-Logic and Heuristics Applied to Synthetic Analysis) synthesis planning system. Beginning with a molecular structure input by light pen or mouse, the system suggests starting materials and reactions to produce the molecule.
- Japanese Information Center for Science and Technology begins online service of its database.
- On an experimental basis, U.S. National Library of Medicine begins offering online access service, known as AIM-TWX (Abridged Index Medicus Accessed by Teletypewriter Exchange Service), to the MEDLARS database. Uses ORBIT software developed by System Development Corporation.
- U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) begins offering online search service RECON (remote console) to NASA facilities. Uses DIALOG software developed by Lockheed Missiles and Space Corporation.
1970
- BIOSIS, CAS, and Engineering Index begin study of overlap of journal coverage.
- European Association of Information Services is established to coordinate and advance the interests of operators of computerized data services.
1971
- Japan Association for International Chemical Information is founded to increase the international flow of chemical information.
- U.S. National Institutes of Health and the Environmental Protection Agency announce the establishment of the Chemical Information System.
- U.S. National Library of Medicine’s MEDLINE (Medical Literature Online) becomes operational.
1972
- Commercial online systems, ORBIT (System Development Corporation) and DIALOG (Lockheed Missiles and Space Corporation), become available in the United States.
- INPADOC (International Patent Documentation System) is founded by the World Intellectual Property Organization and the government of Austria. Later integrated into the European Patent Office.
1973
- NATO’s Computer Representation and Manipulation of Chemical Information is held at Noordwijkerhout, The Netherlands.
1976
- Herman Skolnik becomes the first recipient of the Skolnik Award of the ACS Division of Chemical Information.
- Chemical Abstracts Search, a file of CA references and indexing, is introduced and soon becomes the most widely used chemical database in the world.
- CAS ONLINE becomes operational on a pilot basis.
1977
- Molecular Design Limited, a supplier of computer software for chemical and pharmaceutical companies, is founded by Stuart A. Marson, Steve Peacock, and W. Todd Wipke.
1980
- Gmelin Handbuch begins transition from German to English.
- The Chemical Society, the Royal Institute of Chemistry, and other organizations merge to form the Royal Society of Chemistry in Great Britain.
- The ACS publication, Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, is made available in full text on an experimental basis on the BRS (Bibliographic Retrieval Service) online system.
1982
- Fachgruppe Chemie-Information is founded within the Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker.
- Great Britain’s Chemical Structure Association is established.
1983
- Division of Chemical Information and Computer Science is founded within the Chemical Society of Japan.
- CA File, the most complete online equivalent of CA, is introduced.
- U.S. National Science Foundation incorporates ARPANET into its new INTERNET (interactive network).
1984
- CAS ONLINE is incorporated, along with non-CAS databases, into Scientific and Technical Network International, a joint operation of CAS, Japan Science and Technology Corporation, and Fachinformationzentrum Karlsruhe.
- Journal of Biological Chemistry becomes first journal to ask authors to reference an electronic database, in this case of nucleotide sequences.
1987
- First International Conference on Chemical Structures held in Noordwijkerhout, The Netherlands.
1988
- National Center for Biotechnology Information is founded to oversee the information components of the Human Genome Project.
1989
- First International Conference on Chemical Information held in Montreux, Switzerland.
- Tetrahedron Computer Methodology, edited by W. Todd Wipke, becomes the first journal published in electronic form only, available on floppy disks.
1990
- DIALOG Information Services files $150-million lawsuit against CAS, charging violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act for attempting to monopolize control of the chemical literature.
- CAS responds to DIALOG lawsuit and counter sues for $30 million, charging DIALOG with breach of contract and fraud.
1991
- The CORE project, to create a prototype of an electronic library of ACS journals, is established cooperatively by ACS, CAS, Bellcore, OCLC, and Cornell University.
- Gmelin Database is made commercially available.
1992
- First sites appear on the World Wide Web.
1993
- DIALOG and CAS settle lawsuit and promise further cooperation; terms not disclosed.
1995
- SciFinder, a client server for scientists, is marketed by CAS.
- Chemical Abstracts Services (CAS) Registry System records over 1 million new substances this year.
- CAS begins Internet coverage of chemical science resources on the Internet that are only available in electronic form.
1996
- ACS creates ChemCenter, a web service to access a wide variety of chemical information. Includes full text of 26 ACS journals.
1997
- At the end of the year, the Registry file contains 17.2 million substances. The Registry database contains over 23 million names.
Chronology of Chemical Information Science--By Subject
1957
- Robert Fugmann and co-workers at Farbwerke Hoechst, West Germany, develop Generic Retrieval by Magnetic Tape Storage (GREMAS), a high-performance fragmentation coding, storage, and retrieval system for low molecular weight organic compounds.
1958
- U.S. Patent Office and National Bureau of Standards develop the experimental HAYSTAQ (Have You Stored Answers to Questions) system using a Standards Electronic Automatic Computer (SEAC) for use in searching patent files, with particular focus on chemical information.
1959
- Ascher Opler (Dow Chemical Company) reports on the use of a light pen for graphical entry of chemical structures into a computer.
Using a light pen and computer to draw a chemical structure (1976). Photo courtesy of Chemical Abstracts Service.
1960
- U.S. National Science Foundation begins funding research and development on new information handling projects at CAS, then led by Dale B. Baker, director, who is soon joined by Fred A. Tate, director of the research department. These projects include the Chemical Registry and a comprehensive national computerized chemical information system. By 1974 this funding exceeds $23 million.
- Institute for Scientific Information, formerly Eugene Garfield Associates, publishes first issues of Index Chemicus (briefly called Current Abstracts of Chemistry), a monthly alerting service to new chemical compounds and reactions. It features a computer-based molecular formula index constructed from chemical names.
- CAS publishes first five monthly samples of Chemical Titles (CT ); bi-weekly issues begin in 1961. CT is first periodical to be organized, indexed, and composed almost completely by computer and to use Hans Peter Luhn’s KWIC method.
1962
- Based on earlier work done by Donald J. Gluck and colleagues at DuPont, CAS’s Harry L.Morgan, develops an algorithm to translate two-dimensional structural diagrams into a tabular form (or connection table) that can be manipulated and searched via computer. This algorithm becomes fundamental to the CAS Chemical Registry System.
- Robert E. Maizell (Olin Corp.) and Charles N. Rice (Eli Lilly) begin using CAS tapes to produce in-house alerting service for chemists. Similar program is developed for students by Purdue University at about the same time.
- ISI introduces the RotaForm Index as a molecular formula index for its Index Chemicus.
1963
- George E. Vladutz, a Soviet chemist, enunciates the basic idea for a computerized retrieval system for chemical reactions.
- With funding from the U.S. National Institutes of Health, Institute for Scientific Information publishes the first issue of Genetics Citation Index (GCI) and the prototype of Science Citation Index (SCI ), relying on computer indexing. While GCI is not continued, SCI is first offered commercially in 1964.
- MEDLARS (Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System), an off-line batch service, begins operation from the National Library of Medicine.
- University of Sheffield Postgraduate School of Librarianship and Information Science is founded and two years later begins extensive research program in computerized retrieval methods for chemical and textual databases.
1964
- CAS inaugurates Experimental Chemical Registry System, assigning unique numbers to each new substance.
- Meyer Mike Kessler, of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, develops Technical Information Project (TIP), an experimental online searching system.
- Douglas Engelbart develops the mouse as an input device. Used shortly thereafter for manipulation of chemical structures in input and searching at the Lister Hill Center of the National Institutes of Health.
1965
- Subsidized by grants from the U.S. National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense, and the Office of Science and Technology, CAS Chemical Registry System begins. At first the system is only available for use in-house at CAS.
- CAS offers batch (off-line) access to users of the Chemical Titles file.
- CAS provides online searching of its structure files for the National Cancer Institute.
- Computer processing of CA is introduced on a rudimentary scale. CA indexes are running about 22 months behind the close of a volume period at this time.
- Partially funded by National Institutes of Health, Chemical Biological Activities is introduced by CAS. It was published simultaneously in printed form and on computer tape and was the first computer-produced service to include full text, searchable, abstracts.
- Imperial Chemical Industries in Great Britain begins work on a project named CROSSBOW (Computerized Retrieval of Organic Structures Based on Wiswesser).
- CAS works with the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and the Food and Drug Administration to develop computer-based substance identification techniques. NLM uses the CAS Registry techniques to develop the Chemical Dictionary Online (CHEMLINE) and Toxicology Information Online (TOXLINE) databases.
- Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre is established by Olga Kennard in the Department of Chemistry at Cambridge University.
1966
- Chemical Society Research Unit in Information Dissemination and Retrieval is established at the University of Nottingham under the directorship of Anthony K. Kent. In 1969, it becomes the U.K. Chemical Information Service.
1967
- CAS introduces the hetero-atom-in-context system in its chemical formula index.
1968
- CA Condensates, an alerting service covering the full range of documents abstracted and indexed by CAS, commences. This is the first publicly available computer file to forthcoming issues of CA.
1969
- Elias J. Corey and W. Todd Wipke of Harvard University develop the OCSS-LHASA (Organic Chemical Synthesis Simulation-Logic and Heuristics Applied to Synthetic Analysis) synthesis planning system. Beginning with a molecular structure input by light pen or mouse, the system suggests starting materials and reactions to produce the molecule.
- Japanese Information Center for Science and Technology begins online service of its database.
- On an experimental basis, U.S. National Library of Medicine begins offering online access service, known as AIM-TWX (Abridged Index Medicus Accessed by Teletypewriter Exchange Service), to the MEDLARS database. Uses ORBIT software developed by System Development Corporation.
- U.K. Consortium on Chemical Information, Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker, and CAS form partnership to develop and operate a common, computerized information system for chemistry and chemical engineering.
- U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) begins offering online search service RECON (remote console) to NASA facilities. Uses DIALOG software developed by Lockheed Missiles and Space Corporation.
1971
- U.S. National Institutes of Health and the Environmental Protection Agency announce the establishment of the Chemical Information System.
- U.S. National Library of Medicine’s MEDLINE (Medical Literature Online) becomes operational.
1972
- Commercial online systems, ORBIT (System Development Corporation) and DIALOG (Lockheed Missiles and Space Corporation), become available in the United States.
- INPADOC (International Patent Documentation System) is founded by the World Intellectual Property Organization and the government of Austria. Later integrated into the European Patent Office.
1976
- CA Search, a file of CA references and indexing, is introduced and soon becomes the most widely used chemical database in the world.
- CAS ONLINE becomes operational on a pilot basis.
1977
- Molecular Design Limited, a supplier of computer software for chemical and pharmaceutical companies, is founded by Stuart A. Marson, Steve Peacock, and W. Todd Wipke.
1980
- The ACS publication, Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, is made available in full text on an experimental basis on the BRS (Bibliographic Retrieval Service) online system.
1983
- CA File, the most complete online equivalent of CA, is introduced.
1984
- CAS ONLINE is incorporated, along with non-CAS databases, into Scientific and Technical Network International, a joint operation of CAS, Japan Science and Technology Corporation, and Fachinformationzentrum Karlsruhe.
- Journal of Biological Chemistry becomes first journal to ask authors to reference an electronic database, in this case of nucleotide sequences.
1988
- National Center for Biotechnology Information is founded to oversee the information components of the Human Genome Project.
- Beilstein Online is made commercially available.
1989
- Tetrahedron Computer Methodology, edited by W. Todd Wipke, becomes the first journal published in electronic form only, available on floppy disks.
1990
- DIALOG Information Services files $150-million lawsuit against CAS, charging violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act for attempting to monopolize control of the chemical literature.
- CAS responds to DIALOG lawsuit and counter sues for $30 million, charging DIALOG with breach of contract and fraud.
1991
- Gmelin Database is made commercially available.
1993
- DIALOG and CAS settle lawsuit and promise further cooperation; terms not disclosed.
1994
- Beilstein CrossFire, a user-friendly interface with the Beilstein database, is launched.
1995
- SciFinder, a client server for scientists, is marketed by CAS.
- CAS Registry System records over 1 million new substances this year.
1997
- At the end of the year, the Registry file contains 17.2 million substances. The Registry database contains over 23 million names.
1945
- Article by Gerald J. Cox, Charles F. Baily, and Robert S. Casey in Chemical and Engineering News, “Punched Cards for a Chemical Bibliography,” is first to bring punched cards to attention of chemists.
1946
- ACS Board establishes a Board Committee on Punched Cards, with James W. Perry as chairman. The Committee’s activities are financially supported by the ACS with additional funds solicited from industry. Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Scientific Aids to Learning continues this work with a grant from the Carnegie Corporation.
- Chemical Biological Coordination Center (CBCC) is established in the U.S. National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council. Begins punched card system to organize complex information files.
- G. Malcolm Dyson presents a paper before London’s Royal Institute of Chemistry on his notation system, which seeks to represent chemical structures uniquely and unambiguously in a linear sequence of letters and numbers. IUPAC provisionally recommends the Dyson system.
1947
- William E. Batten, Imperial Chemical Industries in Great Britain, reports on the use of optical coincidence cards for information retrieval.
1948
- Calvin Mooers develops concept of Zatocoding, using “descriptors” and random coding on mechanically sorted edge-notched cards.
- James W. Perry and G. Malcolm Dyson discuss with Thomas J. Watson, IBM president, the need to develop a machine to handle large volumes of scientific information, particularly chemical information. Watson agrees to work on the problem and assigns Hans Peter Luhn to the project.
- Welch Medical Library Indexing Project at Johns Hopkins University begins. Sponsored by the Army Medical Library (now the National Library of Medicine), it was one of the first efforts to study medical and chemical nomenclature and indexing and to apply machine technologies to this information.
1949
- George Willard Wheland, professor at the University of Chicago, develops basic concept of the connection table to represent chemical structures.
- William J. Wiswesser introduces Wiswesser Line Notation.
1950
- Hans Peter Luhn develops prototype of the Luhn Scanner for IBM. Its technology is based on IBM punched cards, run vertically through a specially adapted scanner, using photo-electric cells. It does not require fixed-field searching. It is first demonstrated at the World Chemical Conclave in New York City, September 1951.
- The Information for Industry Index to U.S. Patents (IFI/Plenum) begins publication using Mortimer Taube’s Uniterm system for index terms.
1951
- Mortimer Taube and Alberto F. Thompson of the AEC Technical Information Service present “The Coordinate Indexing of Scientific Fields” before the Symposium on Mechanical Aids to Chemical Documentation sponsored by the ACS’s Division of Chemical Literature. This paper contains the first use of the term coordinate indexing.
- James W. Perry and Robert S. Casey publish Punched Cards: Their Application to Science and Industry. A second edition appeared in 1958 with Madeline Berry and Allen Kent as co-authors.
- At Johns Hopkins University’s Welch Medical Library, Eugene Garfield develops machine methods for compiling Current List of Medical Literature (later merged with Index Medicus) and applies the IBM 101 punched-card sorter to search this database.
- At Sharp and Dohme, Claire Schultz employs Calvin Mooers’s superimposed coding and the Remington Rand punched-card sorter to perform chemistry searches.
- In Great Britain, Derwent Publications, Ltd., begins patent abstracting services with Central Patents Index. Punched cards are used to construct the indexes.
IBM 101 punched-card sorter. Photo courtesy of IBM.
1952
- Karl Heumann and Raimon Beard report on the U.S. National Research Council’s Chemical-Biological Coordination Center survey of the use of punched cards, classification systems, etc. in documenting work in the chemistry and biology fields.
1954
- In France, Jacques-Emile Dubois does initial work on the DARC (Description, Acquisition, Retrieval, and Correlation) system.
1955
- Chemical Abstract Services (CAS) establishes research and development unit.
1957
- Eugene Garfield Associates, Inc., begins project with Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association to scan and index the current literature on steroid compounds. The coding sheets produced are then used by the U.S. Patent Office to make punched cards for searching by patent examiners to find current literature. This project leads indirectly to Index Chemicus.
1958
- Hans Peter Luhn (IBM) and Herbert Ohlman (System Development Corporation) display first key word in context (KWIC) indexes at ICSI.
- Eugene Garfield Associates publishes first issues of Current Contents/Life Sciences, covering life sciences, pharmacy, and chemistry in a format that was prototyped in 1952. Garfield also begins work on his algorithm for converting chemical names into molecular formulas.
1965
- Chemical Abstracts Services markets microfilms of all abstracts published since 1907.
1778
- Chemisches Journal, thought to be the first chemical journal, is established by Lorenz von Crell. Published 1778-84, subsequently renamed Chemische Annalen and published 1784-1803. It already included some abstracts.
1814
- Thomas Thomson begins an annual retrospective review of chemical literature in his Annals of Philosophy, a practice later adopted by other editors like Berzelius.
1817
- Leopold Gmelin publishes first edition of his Handbuch der Anorganischen Chemie.
1820
- The Pharmacopoeia of the United States is published, establishing standard English and Latin names for drugs.
1830
- In Germany Pharmaceutisches Centralblatt is issued as the first chemistry-related abstracts journal. Becomes Chemisches-Pharmaceutisches Centralblatt in 1850 and Chemisches Zentralblatt in 1856. The Deutsche Chemische Gesellschaft assumes responsibility for publication in 1897.
1847
- Quarterly Journal of the Chemical Society of London (later Journal of the Chemical Society) is first published. In 1871 it begins including abstracts of the chemical literature.
1857
- The Société Chimique de Paris is established. Begins publication of Bulletin as well as Répertoire de chimie pure and Répertoire de chimie appliquée, which include abstracts.
1867
- The Royal Society (London) begins publication of its Catalogue of Papers.
1879
- ACS commences publication of the Journal of the American Chemical Society, including abstracts of foreign journals.
- Index Medicus is first issued by the Library of the Surgeon General, U.S. Army; John Shaw Billings, librarian.
1881
- Friedrich Beilstein issues the first edition of his Handbuch der Organischen Chemie, a ready reference to fifteen hundred organic chemicals.
1882
- AAAS Committee on Indexing Chemical Literature is established.
1884
- Lexicon der Kohlenstoffverbindungen, a formula index to Beilsteins Handbuch der Organischen Chemie, is published by Victor von Richter.
- Journal of the Association of Engineering Societies begins abstracting section, “Index Notes,” covering about one hundred journals in the field of engineering. Becomes Engineering Index in 1896.
1889
- First edition of Merck Index is published; at first it is just a list of chemicals and drugs available from Merck & Co.
1893
- AAAS Committee on Indexing Chemical Literature presents plans for an international index to the chemical literature.
1895
- First U.S. venture in chemical abstracting, the Review of American Chemical Research (a supplement to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Technology Quarterly), undertaken by Arthur A. Noyes. In 1897 it is incorporated into the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
1900
- Edwin A. Hill publishes his system for ordering molecular formulas in an index. It is first used by the Classification Division of the U.S. Patent Office.
1907
- First issue of Chemical Abstracts (CA) is published, edited by William A. Noyes, Sr., in the United States, using volunteers as abstractors (a continuing tradition in CA until the 1960s).
1909
- Austin M. Patterson, professor at Ohio State University, assumes editorship of CA, and its offices are moved from the University of Illinois at Urbana to Columbus.
1917
- Editor Evan J. Crane publishes first CA decennial index (1907-16), which includes a new means of naming and indexing compounds developed by Austin M. Patterson and Carleton C. Curran.
1918
- The Beilsteins Handbuch der Organischen Chemie makes possible substructure searching.
1920
- Chemical Abstracts adds annual formula index, first to be used in an abstract journal. These formula indexes did not indicate molecular structures, or functional groups, but served as very broad screens for searching purposes.
1924
- Eighth edition of Gmelin Handbuch der Anorganischen Chemie is published, under sponsorship of Deutsche Chemische Gesellschaft.
1926
- British Chemical Abstracts begins. Becomes British Chemical and Physiological Abstracts in 1938 and British Abstracts in 1946.
- In the United States Biological Abstracts is first published.
1927
- Nippon Kagaku Soran, a Japanese chemical abstracts journal, is published.
1934
- Samuel C. Bradford, mathematician and librarian at the Science Museum in London, develops his “law of scattering” regarding differences in demand for scientific journals. This work influences bibliometrics and citation analysis of scientific publications.
1940
- The Ring Index, by Austin M. Patterson and Leonard T. Capell, is first published.
- Bulletin Signalétique, a French abstract journal, is first published.
1942
- National Registry of Rare Chemicals established by the Armour Research Foundation in Chicago.
1946
- USDA Library offers to furnish copies of all articles cited in CA to subscribers and members of the ACS. Project is halted in 1956 because of copyright issues.
1947
- Preparation of the CA fourth decennial index (covering 1937-46) requires 1.6 million index cards, five miles of one-column galley proofs, and several years to produce.
- First volume of first edition of Kirk-Othmer Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology is published.
1948
- Gmelin-Institut für Anorganische Chemie und Grenzgebiete of the Max-Planck Institut commences editing and publishing Gmelin Handbuch.
1952
- The Institute of Scientific Information is established at the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Moscow and in the following year begins publication of Referativnyi Zhurnal, Khimiya, a chemical abstracting journal. In 1955, the institute becomes the All-Soviet Institute for Scientific and Technical Information, the centralized abstracting and indexing service for all scientific fields.
1958
- Kagaku Gijutsu Bunken Sokuho (Alerting Service of Scientific and Technical Information) by Japan Information Center for Science and Technology is published. Covers world science literature.
1960
- Chemical Abstracts Services and the Union of American Biological Societies (later, its information service known as BIOSIS–BioSciences Information Service of Biological Abstracts) agree to exchange abstracting services to avoid duplication of efforts.
1961
- American Institute of Chemical Engineers publishes Chemical Engineering Thesaurus, derived from the DuPont Technical Information Thesaurus, developed by Mortimer Taube as a consultant to the Du Pont Company’s Engineering Information Center.
1969
- Chemisches Zentralblatt ceases publication.
1970
- BIOSIS, CAS, and Engineering Index begin study of overlap of journal coverage.
1980
- Gmelin Handbuch begins transition from German to English.
1969
- U.S. Department of Defense implements ARPANET (advanced research projects agency network) to demonstrate how communications between computers could promote cooperative research among scientists.
1983
- U.S. National Science Foundation incorporates ARPANET into its new INTERNET (interactive network).
1991
- The CORE project, to create a prototype of an electronic library of ACS journals, is established cooperatively by ACS, CAS, Bellcore, OCLC, and Cornell University.
1992
- First sites appear on the World Wide Web.
1995
- CAS begins Internet coverage of chemical science resources that are only available in electronic form.
1996
- ACS creates ChemCenter, a web service to access a wide variety of chemical information. Includes full text of 26 ACS journals.
1787
- Méthode de Nomenclature Chimique, by Louis Bernard Guyton de Morveau, Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, Claude Louis Berthollet, and Antoine François de Fourcroy, is published in Paris. Created from Greek and Latin roots, the nomenclature system represents what Lavoisier’s followers understand about the composition of hundreds of substances.
Early chemical symbols and those created by Jean Henri Hassenfratz and Pierre Auguste Adet to complement the Methode de Nomenclature Chimiqe (1787). Courtesy of the Edgar Fahs Smith Memorial Collection, Department of Special Collections, University of Pennsylvania Library.
1813
- Jöns Jakob Berzelius proposes a system of chemical symbols in which elements are represented by the first letters of their names. Compounds are represented by these letters with superscripts indicating combining weights, which in turn suggest the number of atoms combining.
1820
- The Pharmacopoeia of the United States is published, establishing standard English and Latin names for drugs.
1858
- In a published outline of a chemistry course, Stanislao Cannizzaro clarifies the calculation of atomic weights, then a highly contentious subject, using, in part, the long-neglected hypothesis put forward by Amedeo Avagadro in 1811.
- Friedrich August Kekule and Archibald Scott Couper recognize that carbon atoms have the ability to link to one another in chains.
- Archibald Scott Couper uses straight lines to indicate valence bonds in organic compounds, as is still the practice in most modern structural diagrams.
1860
- Congress is held at Karlsruhe Technische Hochschule to discuss the feasibility of establishing a systematic and rational nomenclature for chemistry. The congress does not reach any conclusive results, but several key participants return home with Stanislao Cannizzaro’s outline (1858), which ultimately convinces them of the validity of his scheme for calculating atomic weights.
1865
- Friedrich Kekule, as well as others, including Josef Loschmidt, identifies the ring structure of benzene.
1869
- Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev publishes a periodic table of the elements organized by atomic weight, similar chemical and physical characteristics, and valence.
1870
- Julius Lothar Meyer publishes a periodic table similar to Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev’s that he has been developing since 1864.
1873
- Jacobus Henricus van’t Hoff and Joseph Achille LeBel’s recognition that there are two ways of arranging four unlike substituents tetrahedrally around a carbon atom marks the beginning of three-dimensional structural organic chemistry and the associated problem of representing these structures graphically and, much later, in a machine-readable code.
Three-dimensional paper models used by Jacobus Henricus van’t Hoff in communicating his stereo-chemical ideas. Courtesy O. Bertrand Ramsay.
1882
- London’s Chemical Society publishes Nomenclature and Notation, guidelines for establishing systematic and uniform practices.
1884
- ACS establishes the Committee on Nomenclature and Notation.
1892
- Geneva conference establishes principles that set the stage for an evolving chemical nomenclature. These principles are developed more fully by various forerunners of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), which was founded in 1919.
1895
- Alfred Werner introduces a systematic nomenclature for coordination compounds based on the groups surrounding a central metal atom.
1917
- Editor Evan J. Crane publishes first CA decennial index (1907-1916), which includes a new means of naming and indexing compounds developed by Austin M. Patterson and Carleton C. Curran.
1921
- IUPAC establishes commissions on chemical nomenclature to formulate rules for naming chemical compounds systematically.
1938
- Conrad Weygand, a German chemist, proposes a method for classifying chemical reactions based on the breaking and forming of bonds during a reaction.
1946
- G. Malcolm Dyson presents a paper before London’s Royal Institute of Chemistry on his notation system, which seeks to represent chemical structures uniquely and unambiguously in a linear sequence of letters and numbers. International Union for Pure Applied Chemistry provisionally recommends the Dyson system.
1948
- Welch Medical Library Indexing Project at Johns Hopkins University begins. Sponsored by the Army Medical Library (now the National Library of Medicine), it is one of the first efforts to study medical and chemical nomenclature and indexing and to apply machine technologies to this information.
1949
- George Willard Wheland, professor at the University of Chicago, develops basic concept of the connection table to represent chemical structures.
- William J. Wiswesser introduces Wiswesser Line Notation.
1952
- National Research Council issues a call for the comparative study of the best notation systems for structural formulas.
1956
- Robert Cahn, Christopher Ingold, and Vladimir Prelog present a nomenclature system for the unambiguous specification of stereoisomers.
1957
- IUPAC approves rules for chemical nomenclature that are subsequently issued in book form–the famous Red, Blue, and Green Books, dealing with inorganic, organic, and physical chemistry, respectively.
1958
- Beilsteins Handbuch adopts CIP (for Cahn, Ingold, and Prelog). CIP is now used nearly universally.
1967
- CAS introduces the hetero-atom-in-context system in its chemical formula index.
1969
- Elias J. Corey and W. Todd Wipke of Harvard University develop the OCSS-LHASA (Organic Chemical Synthesis Simulation Logic and Heuristics Applied to Synthetic Analysis) synthesis planning system. Beginning with a molecular structure input by light pen or mouse, the system suggests starting materials and reactions to produce the molecule.
1778
- Chemisches Journal thought to be the first chemistry journal, is established by Lorenz von Crell. Published 1778-84; subsequently renamed Chemische Annalen and published 1784-1803. It already included some abstracts.
1789
- Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, Louis Bernard Guyton de Moreau, Claude Louis Berthollet, and Antoin François de Fourcroy establish the Annales de chimie.
- Short-lived Chemical Society of Philadelphia is founded and subsequently publishes its transactions.
1832
- Justus Liebig acquires Annalen der Pharmacie. Name later changes to Justus Liebigs Annalen der Chemie and, most recently, to European Journal of Organic Chemistry.
1841
- The Chemical Society of London is established.
1847
- Quarterly Journal of the Chemical Society of London (later, Journal of the Chemical Society) is first published. In 1871 it begins including abstracts of the chemical literature.
1848
- The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is founded. It includes a section devoted to chemistry.
1857
- The Société Chimique de Paris is established. Begins publication of Bulletin as well as Répertoire de chimie pure and Répertoire de chimie appliquée, which include abstracts.
1859
- Chemical News and Journal of Physical Science (with which is incorporated the Chemical Gazette), the first weekly chemistry periodical, is published in England. It continues to be published until 1932.
1860
- Congress is held at Karlsruhe Technische Hochschule to discuss the feasibility of establishing a systematic and rational nomenclature for chemistry. The congress does not reach any conclusive results, but several key participants return home with Stanislao Cannizzaro’s outline (1858), which ultimately convinces them of the validity of his scheme for calculating atomic weights.
1867
- The Deutsche Chemische Gesellschaft is established. Begins publication of its journal, Berichte.
- The Royal Society begins publication of its Catalogue of Papers in London.
1868
- The Rossiskoe Khimicheskoe Obschestvo (now Russko Khimichesko Obschestvo) is established in Russia. Begins publication of a journal the following year.
1871
- Societa Chimia Italiana is established in Italy. Begins publication of a journal the same year.
1876
- American Chemical Society (ACS) is formed in New York City and first proceedings are published.
1878
- Kagaku-kai is established in Tokyo and, two years later, publishes its journal in Japanese; in 1921, becomes Nippon Kagaku-kai.
1879
- ACS commences publication of the Journal of the American Chemical Society, including abstracts of foreign journals.
1892
- Geneva conference establishes principles that set the stage for an evolving chemical nomenclature. These principles are developed more fully by various forerunners of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), which is founded in 1919.
1908
- American Institute of Chemical Engineers is founded and begins publication of its transactions.
1911
- Wilhelm Ostwald founds Die Brücke, an international institute for the organization of intellectual work, but fails in his attempt to establish a special international institute to document the field of chemistry.
1935
- A $15,000 grant from the Chemical Foundation allows Watson Davis to establish the Documentation Institute as part of Science Service and to operate the Auxiliary Publication Service for science librarians. These initiatives lead indirectly to the establishment, in 1937, of the American Documentation Institute, the predecessor of the American Society for Information Science.
1939
- France’s Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique is established with chemical information science among its fields of research.
1943
- Technical Library Techniques Symposium is held at an ACS meeting, and the Chemical Literature Group is formed as part of the Division of Chemical Education.
1946
- ACS board establishes a Board Committee on Punched Cards, with James W. Perry as chairman. The committee’s activities are financially supported by the ACS with additional funds solicited from industry. Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Scientific Aids to Learning continues this work with a grant from the Carnegie Corporation.
- Chemical Biological Coordination Center (CBCC) is established in the U.S. National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council. Begins punched-card system to organize complex information files.
- The Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker is founded, replacing the Deutsche Chemische Gesellschaft and the Verein Deutscher Chemiker.
1948
- ACS’s Division of Chemical Literature is formed and the next year begins publication of Chemical Literature. In 1975 name changes to Division of Chemical Information.
- Royal Society Scientific Information Conference convenes in London.
1949
- Austin M. Patterson receives first A.M. Patterson Award for Documentation in Chemistry from ACS’s Dayton Section. In 1975 the award is expanded to honor E.J. Crane and becomes the Patterson-Crane Award.
1952
- The Institute of Scientific Information is established at the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Moscow and in the following year begins publication of Referativnyi Zhurnal, Khimiya, a chemical abstracting journal. In 1955 the institute becomes the All-Soviet Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (VINITI), the centralized abstracting and indexing service for all scientific fields.
1958
- International Conference on Scientific Information (ICSI) is held in Washington, D.C.
- National Federation of Science Abstracting and Indexing Services is founded. In 1972 it becomes National Federation of Abstracting and Indexing Services.
1965
- Chemical Notation Association is founded in the United States.
1966
- The International Council of Scientific Unions establishes the Committee on Data for Science and Technology (CODATA) to improve the quality and accessibility of scientific data collected worldwide.
1967
- West Germany’s Internationale Dokumentationsgesellschaft für Chemie is founded with the cooperation of German chemical companies.
1968
- Association of Information and Dissemination Centers is established by various private and public national and international organizations to deal with production, distribution, and use of electronic products and services.
- Information Industry Association is founded by Eugene Garfield, Saul Herner, and others.
1969
- The U.K. Consortium on Chemical Information, the Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker, and CAS form a partnership to develop and operate a common, computerized information system for chemistry and chemical engineering.
- Great Britain’s Chemical Notation Association is founded.
1970
- European Association of Information Services is established to coordinate and advance the interests of operators of computerized data services.
1971
- Japan Association for International Chemical Information is founded to increase the international flow of chemical information.
1973
- NATO’s Computer Representation and Manipulation of Chemical Information is held at Noordwijkerhout, The Netherlands.
1976
- Herman Skolnik becomes the first recipient of the Skolnik Award of the ACS Division of Chemical Information.
1980
- The Chemical Society, the Royal Institute of Chemistry, and other organizations merge to form the Royal Society of Chemistry in Great Britain.
1982
- Fachgruppe Chemie-Information is founded within the Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker.
- Great Britain’s Chemical Structure Association is established.
1983
- Division of Chemical Information and Computer Science is founded within the Chemical Society of Japan.
1987
- First International Conference on Chemical Structures held in Noordwijkerhout, The Netherlands.
1989
- First International Conference on Chemical Information held in Montreux, Switzerland.