Experiment in nostalgia

Having posted about the board games and books of my childhood, perhaps it's time to mention another toy that, as it turned out, presaged my primary career path. I'm talking, of course, about the venerable Gilbert Chemistry Set.

My set came in blue metal box, similar to the one shown here; in fact this may be the actual model I had. I remember the square bottles of chemicals like the ones in the pic below. I can't recall much about the chemicals themselves, though I know they included borax, tannic acid, and (I'm pretty sure) cobalt chloride.

Like many of my toys and books, this one I inherited from my older brother – nobody gave chemistry sets to little girls in the 50s. Girls got dolls and play kitchenware and the like. But I happily took my brother's castoffs and experimented with acids and bases and litmus paper and even a real alcohol-burning lamp. (The set did not include a retort, no matter what the illustration might imply.)

I remember supplementing the glassware with a few extra test tubes and small bottles purchased from the local drugstore. (This was back in the days when a drugstore really was a drugstore, not a mini-supermarket and convenience store that fills prescriptions in the back.) But I certainly had no premonition that some day I would work with Bunsen burners and exotic glassware and considerably more hazardous chemicals in a real laboratory.


Apparently what passes for a chemistry set these days includes only miniscule quantities of the most innocuous stuff imaginable, like sodium bicarbonate (aka baking soda), and they've even eliminated test tubes or anything glass, for fear that a kid might break one and cut herself. (Of course your kid would never encounter anything breakable in the home like a drinking glass, right?) And needless to say, alcohol lamps are nowhere to be found, let alone a retort.

Makes you wonder how any kid of our generation managed to live to adulthood without getting killed or maimed.