Vintage work crew photos

[bruce.desertrat]

Sorry for interrupting all the fun here:
This lab wasn't all-female just for being exceptionally progressive, offering "equal opportunities for ladies" -
there was a big, bloody war going on right then.

"WWI Brunner Mond modified several of their plants in order to produce ammonium nitrate for munitions.
As well as purifying TNT for government use, the firm provided synthetic phenol for conversion to the alternative explosive, picric acid."

From: https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Brunner,_Mond_and_Co

Oh what fun! Not a place I'd like to work!

(Once upon a time, long ago I was helping to clear out and clean up a long-time toxicology professor's lab a few years after he'd retired, and in one of the chemical cabinets we came across a large glass jar of picric acid that over the years had picked up moisture and recrystallized all over the inside of the jar and up around the lid.

We evacuated the building and called in the bomb squad for that one! There was probably 1-1.5 kilos of it in the jar. )