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Archives - CAS Celebrates Its Centenary in 2007
CAS Celebrates Its Centenary in 2007March 2007 Chemical AbstractsTM (CA) began publication on January 1, 1907, as the result of efforts of the American Chemical Society to bring more recognition to American chemists and chemical engineers. In fact, CA could be considered a direct descendent of the Review of American Chemical Research, whose abstracts were published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society from 1897 through 1906. The first issue contained just 502 abstracts, brief summaries of scientific papers and patents. By contrast, CAS added more than a million abstracts to its databases during 2006. CA was first published at the National Bureau of Standards in Washington, D. C., where the Editor, William A. Noyes, Sr., was chief chemist. The CA editorial office moved to the campus of The Ohio State University (OSU) in Columbus in 1909, after a brief sojourn at the University of Illinois. Austin M. Patterson, the second CA Editor, had been invited to move to OSU by the chemistry department chairman, William McPherson. The CA office remained on the OSU campus for 56 years, and today maintains close ties to the university. The organization became an operational division of the American Chemical Society in 1956 and has been known ever since as Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS). By 1965, CAS moved to a new building just north of the OSU campus. This site is still home to CAS and now comprises three buildings, including a data center constructed in 2001. Through exemplary leadership over the last 100 years, CAS has progressed into the organization it is today. Visionaries led the way to establish CA as a model of professionalism and commitment to excellence that made a model for secondary information services in the sciences. In 1995, at the dawn of the Internet era, CAS introduced SciFinder, a revolutionary desktop research tool. It, and CAS, have been growing ever since. CAS global revenues have grown steadily for more than a decade; though price increases for CAS services have been modest. Meanwhile, the scale of CAS indexed content has expanded rapidly, as CAS has added tens of millions of bibliographic and substance records, reactions, property data elements, citations, etc. In addition, analysis and visualization capabilities are now featured in STN AnaVist, supporting the evolving role of information professionals. What does the next 100 years hold for CAS? With its unrivaled databases of literature, patents, and substance information and team of skilled, analytical scientists, CAS looks ahead with confidence. What has not changed over the course of a century is the CAS commitment to helping scientists benefit from the published work of their colleagues around the world and fulfilling the vision of the American Chemical Society: Improving people's lives through the transforming power of chemistry. For more information regarding the CAS anniversary, please visit www.cas.org. Updated 4/24/2008 4:51:28 PM
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