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  Home > JCE Print > Journal of Chemical Education > Issues > 2002  > October  >
Chemical Education Today
NCW 2002: Chemistry Keeps Us Clean. Chemists Clean Up: A History and Exploration of the Craft of Soapmaking—How Soap Came to be Common in America
Kim Kostka and David D. McKay
Department of Chemistry, University of Wisconsin–Rock County, Janesville, WI 53546
Cover
October 2002
Vol. 79 No. 10
p. 1172
Abstract
Soap is an article whose commonplace presence and obvious necessity we take for granted at the dawn of the twenty-first century. For most of American history bath soap, however, was a luxury product. This paper explores the confluence of the cultural and technological changes that led to its transformation into the ubiquitous and well-used object it is today. We pick up the timeline for the development of soap in the early American republic when soapmaking was a householder's task and soap use was generally limited to laundering clothes. We then trace the rise of the American cleanliness movement and correlate this rise to the increased manufacturing capabilities of the nation's large soapmakers. This technological forward movement included improvements in producing alkalis as well as the inception and growth of the oleochemicals industry. Additional growth agents were the development of market analysis, advertising campaigns, and factory-scale hydrolysis of fatty acids from their parent fats.

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Supplement
A glossary of historic terms for the chemistry of soap is available.
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*  Citation
 Kostka, Kim; McKay, David D. J. Chem. Educ. 2002 79 1172.
*  Keywords
 Consumer Chemistry; General Chemistry; History / Philosophy; Industrial Chemistry; Lipids
*  History
 Created:
Last Updated:		 August 29, 2002
March 16, 2005
Link to Featured Molecules added (April 2004).
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