More than 115 years of chemistry among Chemical Abstracts Service, scientists and Columbus
Chemical Abstracts Service — an American Chemical Society publication that curates and analyzes published science worldwide on new chemical substances or new info about existing substances — was founded by William A. Noyes in 1907. Two years later, Chemical Abstracts' staff moved from the University of Illinois to Ohio State University, and they've been in Columbus since.
More than 400 journals were abstracted by the service in 1909, giving Ohio State's chemistry department access to all the information in the abstracts.
In 1965, Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) moved to a new building on a 50-acre site east of Olentangy River Road, just north of the Ohio State campus in Columbus. This was also the same year CAS installed a computer center, which stored their new Chemical Registry System and sped up research operations at the facility.
In addition, CAS staff members were reading more than 10,000 reports a month by 1965 and abstracting them for scientists around the world.
CAS expanded in 1973 with a new five-story building that opened next to the existing building. The first three floors were dedicated to research and development and production operations divisions, including a computer complex. Brubaker Brandt Inc. was the architectural firm that designed the expansion, and Garwick and Ross Inc. were the general contractors.
CAS was by 1973 reviewing 400,000 reports of new research and developments in chemistry each year and abstracting the content. They published a 600-page weekly journal, which contained more than 7,000 abstracts of articles.
In 1983, CAS signed an exchange agreement with FIZ Karlsruhe in West Germany to share databases. The database was named STN (Scientific & Technical Information Network). United States scientists gained access to FIZ Karlsruhe's computer files on physics, mathematics, engineering and nuclear technology, while European researchers gained access to CAS' data bank on chemical substances.
Increasing access to scientific information, CAS launched SciFinder in 1995, the client software that enabled chemists to search CAS databases from their personal computers using a point-and-click interface. A web version of the software launched in 2008 is still operating today.
More recently, CAS announced in 2022 the release of nearly 500,000 CAS registry numbers under an open license in their Common Chemistry project. The registry covers areas of community interest, including common and frequently regulated chemicals, and those relevant to high school and undergraduate chemistry classes.
Aaron O'Donovan is the Special Collections manager with the Columbus Metropolitan Library.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Chemical Abstracts has curated scientific info in Columbus since 1909
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