The Amazing Brew

For years U.S. chemical journals have discussed the violent and unpredictable explosive qualities of perchloric acid.* But 42-year-old Robert O'Connor did not read chemical journals. As secretary and manager of Los Angeles' O'Connor Electro-Plating Corp. he was chiefly concerned with sales and new business. He was delighted when a dark, bespectacled little man told him about a secret new electrolytic brew compounded of perchloric acid.

The little man's name was Magee--"Doctor" Robert Magee. He said he had a degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He showed O'Connor some samples of aluminum he had treated with his mysterious liquid. O'Connor's eyes bugged. The samples gleamed like silver. O'Connor's business had fallen off after V-J day. But if he could produce a gleaming surface without the expense of buffing and polishing, he could get more orders than he had handled during the war. He hired Magee, enlisted a patent attorney, and prepared to get rich.

Dr. Magee slopped about the plant with his deadly liquor as though it were so much milk. Once, on an automobile trip, he asked O'Connor's 18-year-old son to hold a jug of it between his knees. O'Connor's customers were delighted with the sample plating he produced; orders flowed in and competitors began a wild but fruitless campaign to discover Magee's secret. A few weeks ago O'Connor gleefully put it into commercial production, a process which involved running an electric current through a 300-gal. stainless steel vat full of the perilous fluid.

The Roof Rose. All went well until 9:45 one morning last week. Then the mixture blew up like a bathtub full of nitroglycerin.

The whole of Los Angeles' downtown area shuddered. A light plane flying ten miles away was jolted by a sudden disturbance of the air. A florist, five miles away, heard a dull boom and saw the petals of his peach blossoms flutter to the floor. The 27-story tower of the earthquake-proof city hall shivered; windows crashed and tinkled for blocks around.

The O'Connor plant, a low, white brick-fronted building, simply disintegrated. Its roof rose into the air and flew apart, its framework splintered, its walls bulged and burst in one enormous moment of concussion and incandescence. The walls and roofs of nearby buildings were smashed; automobiles caved in on the streets.

Dazed, wild-eyed survivors, most of them dyed green by chemicals, scuttled off down the littered streets. They were soon met by police cars, fire trucks, ambulances and mobs of curious and frightened people. Franciscan friars ran for the wreckage, robes held high, to give the last sacrament. Firemen pried at timbers, pulled at protruding arms and legs. Fifteen bodies were found. One of the victims, a twelve-year-old Negro boy, had been killed by a section of iron pipe as he rode his bicycle two blocks away.

The Doctor Disappeared. Police officers and fire authorities, interviewing O'Connor, were amazed and baffled by his description of Magee's secret liquid. They began checking his background.

They discovered that he had been adopted as a foundling by a Steubenville, Ohio streetcar conductor, had grown up into a cold and secretive youth who kept his room jammed with chemical equipment, showed little interest in anything else. They guessed that his knowledge of chemistry was self-taught--M.I.T. had no record of him. But he should have been familiar with perchloric acid's dangerous characteristics--he had worked as a chemist at Henry Kaiser's Fontana steel plant and for the Douglas Aircraft Co.

Nobody was able to locate Magee. At week's end the painstaking search of the wreckage revealed no sign of him. But a great crater gaped at the spot on which his vat had stood and a little lake of murky liquid lay at its bottom. Police asked a chemist to dip up a little of the liquid and analyze it. It seemed possible that it would contain the last, mortal traces of "Doctor" Magee.

-H Cl O4--a colorless, fuming, oily liquid.

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