"As one of America's
first oxygen-producing concerns and, after 1917, part of one of the country's largest chemical companies, Linde soon became the world's largest producer of industrial gases"
Source:
http://www.answers.com/topic/union-carbide-corporation
" Linde, the son of a Lutheran minister, was educated in science and engineering at the Federal Polytechnic in Zurich, Switzerland. After working for locomotive manufacturers in Berlin and Munich, he became a faculty member at the Polytechnic in Munich. His research there on heat theory, from 1873 to 1877, led to his invention of the first reliable and efficient compressed-ammonia refrigerator. The company he established to promote this invention was an international success: refrigeration rapidly displaced ice in food handling and was introduced into many industrial processes.
After a decade Linde withdrew from managerial activities to refocus on research, and
in 1895 he succeeded in liquefying air by first compressing it and then letting it expand rapidly, thereby cooling it. He then obtained oxygen and nitrogen from the liquid air by slow warming. In the early days of oxygen production the
biggest use by far for the gas was the oxyacetylene torch, invented in France in 1904, which revolutionized metal cutting and welding in the construction of ships, skyscrapers, and other iron and steel structures.
One company formed to use Linde’s later patents was the Linde Air Products Company, founded in Cleveland in 1907. In 1917 Linde Air Products joined with four other companies that produced acetylene, among other products, to form Union Carbide and Carbon Corporation."
Source:
http://www.chemheritage.org/classroom/c ... linde.html
World Chronology: 1901
"Refrigeration pioneer Carl von Linde, now 59,
pioneers oxygen furnaces for steelmaking with a
new method for separating pure liquid oxygen from liquid air, but the steel industry will be slow to perfect and adopt the new process"