-------------+----------------------------+--------------------- Year. | Bleach Manufactured, | Selling Price | Short Tons. | Per 100 Lbs. -------------+----------------------------+--------------------- 1904 | 19,000 | 1909 | 58,000 | 1914 | 155,000 | $1.63 1915 | 180,000[A] | 2.63 1916 | 230,000[A] | 6.56 1917 | 260,000[A] | 2.44 -------------+----------------------------+--------------------- [A] Estimated. As a disinfectant, chlorine was first used about the year 1800 by de Morveau, in France, and by Cruikshank, in England, who prepared the gas by heating a mixture of hydrochloric acid and potassium bichromate or pyrolusite; this is essentially the same as the original mixture used by Scheele. During the early part of the last century the efficacy of chlorine of lime as a disinfectant, and particularly as a deodourant, was well recognised and as early as 1854 an English Royal Commission used this substance for deodourising the sewage of London. A committee of the American Public Health Association reported in 1885 that chloride of lime was the best disinfectant available when cost and efficiency were considered. Eau de Javelle, first made by Percy at the Javelle works near Paris in 1792, is another chlorine compound that has enjoyed a considerable reputation as a disinfectant and deodouriser for over a century; it is essentially a mixture of sodium chloride and sodium hypochlorite. The discovery of electrolytic hypochlorites dates back to 1859, when Watt found that chlorides of the fixed alkalies and alkaline earths yielded hypochlorites on being submitted to the action of an electrical current. Until the middle of the last century disinfection was regarded as a process that arrested or prevented putrefactive changes but the nature of these changes was imperfectly comprehended and micro-organisms were not associated with them.