Chromatography Forum

I'm currently reading "The Sirens of Titan" by Kurt Vonnegut and just came across the following passage: "The guards were hardly necessary, since the crowd inside was monolithic." The new type of "monolithic" HPLC column came to mind immediately. This passage gave me a new insight into the column structure. And to think that HPLC wasn't even invented in 1959 when Vonnegut wrote this story! Or did the HPLC column developers steal from him Let the speculation begin!

I suspect it's never a good time to rain on parades.....

Monolithic has been around for over 100 years as a description of homogeneous edifices, structures, and societies ( eg Sparta ). Oxford English Dictionary ( pay to subscribe ) should identify first recorded use.

The use of monolith for some HPLC columns probably immediately descends from the use of the term for similarly-designed automotive exhaust catalysts that replace of the packed bed originals during the 1970s.

Please keep having fun,

Bruce Hamilton

In a faculty seminar sometime between 1989 and early 1972, Robert E Sievers (then known for NMR shift reagents) talked about a "HPLC" column he made by polymerizing the stationary phase (organic and not pellicular) inside the column. He separated some methyl isomers of aromatic compounds. We students were awed, as it was considered to be impossible at that time to do such separations. I don´t know where he got the idea to do this, but nobody called this monolithic at the time.

I suspect it's never a good time to rain on parades.....

Bruce,

Not a problem, I have a large umbrella. Thanks for the background on "monolithic" and it's association with HPLC columns. As a chromotographer, I was just struck with the novelty of encountering the term in an unexpected place. Little details like this make life interesting and enjoyable.

Napoleon brought a monolith with him from Egypt to Paris. Monoliths had been known in Egypt for a few thousand years. Of course, the Egyptians would not have used a Greek word for naming such things...

With respect to chromatography, a monolith may make a guard less necessary, but there may still be problems if the subject matter is very dirty.

So what did the crowd listen to?

So what did the crowd listen to?

In the story, the prevailing religion on earth foretold the return of a space traveler and sure enough, he did return. The crowd had gathered to see him in person.

Hmm... nothing dirty there... no guards needed...

Mono = one
lith = rock

Monolith = one rock, usually applied to monuments etc to distinguish those hewn from a single chunk of rock from those put together from several pieces.

In conventional packed HPLC columns there are lots (and lots !) of little silica "rocks", in a monolithic column there is only one "rock" with lots of holes in it.

And if any of the packed column manufacturers think that polylithic has a nice marketing ring to it we can talk about a royalty deal

Peter

Perhaps I wasn't clear enough in the first shower of rain.

The definition that Vonnegut uses is the one for social structures, not physical. One common example that I learnt decades ago, and promptly forgot - until Skunked_Once mentioned monolithic, was Sparta.

From www.thefreedictionary.com definition of monolithic
.....
2. monolithic - characterized by massiveness and rigidity and total uniformity; "a monolithic society"; "a monolithic worldwide movement"

Please keep having fun,

Bruce Hamilton

And so now we come to a paradox; monolithic LC columns have high porosity (or at least permeability) while monolithic societies tend to to be totally impervious to anything from outside.

Peter

Polylithic....

I love it!!! Will immediately make a proposal to our marketing crew...

How about oligolithic? Could stand for different particle sizes... We have bilithic, trilithic and quadrolithic packings, maybe even a pentalithic one...

Classical Greek could string concepts together into long words, so a 5 micron spherical packing would be pentamicronicsphaericalpolylithic. Before long we have a universal terminology for LC columns with an air of profound learning and names that are longer than the columns are. Next step is to do like the biologists and set up an international commission on nomenclature.

Peter

"The schism, like so may things, dated back to the war, when the economy had, for efficiency's sake, become monolithic."

The Piano Player by Kurt Vonnegut

There's that word again Love all the responses so far!

One of the disadvantages of monoliths is that when they break, they break right through, and you can only patch them up, never really fix them. If you have something polylithic and a few blocks crack you can chisel them out and put in new ones. World economic crisis anyone ....

Peter