NOVEMBER, 1950 Vol. 75, No. 896 THE ANALYST EDITORIAL IN this issue The Analyst has departed from its general principle of selecting for publication only those papers that contain, for the most part, original and previously unpublished matter of analytical interest. The subject of this exception to the general rule is a very full account of a scheme for the standardisation of a complete set of volumetric solutions that has been devised by the Analytical Chemists’ Committee of Imperial Chemical Industries Limited. An outline of the scheme was given by the late Edward Hinks, a public analyst, in a Presidential Address to the Society in 1930.* In describing it as fundamental work of the highest kind, he said that it dealt with a matter that concerned almost all analytical chemists and that it reflected great credit on the analysts who had devised it. Although this paper consists almost entirely of information that has previously been recorded in journals and textbooks, its value to chemists in general and the manner and order of its presentation are of sufficient merit to make it desirable that it should be published somewhere in a form that will make it easily accessible to all practising analysts.That being so, The Analyst would appear to be the most suitable journal for its appearance in print. It contains the results of many years’ work by a number of collaborators who, starting with a scheme for standardising volumetric solutions based on silver as a primary standard that was devised by the late William Rintoul of Nobel’s Explosive Company in 1912, have brought it to its present state of perfection.To an analytical chemist, the value of this scheme lies in the lengthy experience that has been gained in its use by a large number of chemists engaged in the scientific control of industrial manufacturing processes. This experience has, down the years, made it possible to discover any weak points in the scheme or the cause of any discrepancies in the results by different workers or between different laboratories; and so, by agradual process of evolution, to select the best methods and submit them to an extended trial. The methods used for the purification of the reagents, the preparation of the standard solutions from them and also the work of standardisation are described in full working detail. To have attempted any condensation or abridgement would, by spoiling this continuity, have deprived the scheme of most of its value to a practical analyst. By printing this paper in full, The AaaZyst pays a tribute to the chemical acumen of a former President and makes available to chemists in general the labours of all those, unnamed but not unhonoured, who have worked towards its perfection and made its publication possible. * Analyst, 1930, 55, 238. 667