<P> The Solvay process was developed by the Belgian industrial chemist Ernest Solvay in 1861 . In 1864, Solvay and his brother Alfred constructed a plant in the Belgian town of Charleroi and in 1874, they expanded into a larger plant in Nancy, France . The new process proved more economical and less polluting than the Leblanc method, and its use spread . In the same year, Ludwig Mond visited Solvay to acquire the rights to use his process, and he and John Brunner formed the firm of Brunner, Mond & Co., and built a Solvay plant at Winnington, England . Mond was instrumental in making the Solvay process a commercial success; he made several refinements between 1873 and 1880 that removed byproducts that could slow or halt the mass production of sodium carbonate through use of the process . </P> <P> The late 19th century saw an explosion in both the quantity of production and the variety of chemicals that were manufactured . Large chemical industries also took shape in Germany and later in the United States . </P> <P> Production of artificial manufactured fertilizer for agriculture was pioneered by Sir John Lawes at his purpose - built Rothamsted Research facility . In the 1840s he established large works near London for the manufacture of superphosphate of lime . Processes for the vulcanization of rubber were patented by Charles Goodyear in the United States and Thomas Hancock in England in the 1840s . The first synthetic dye was discovered by William Henry Perkin in London . He partly transformed aniline into a crude mixture which, when extracted with alcohol, produced a substance with an intense purple colour . He also developed the first synthetic perfumes . However, it was German industry that quickly began to dominate the field of synthetic dyes . The three major firms BASF, Bayer and Hoechst produced several hundred different dyes, and by 1913, the German industry produced almost 90 percent of the world supply of dyestuffs and sold about 80 percent of their production abroad . In the United States, Herbert Henry Dow's use of electrochemistry to produce chemicals from brine was a commercial success that helped to promote the country's chemical industry . </P> <P> The petrochemical industry can be traced back to the oil works of James Young in Scotland and Abraham Pineo Gesner in Canada . The first plastic was invented by Alexander Parkes, an English metallurgist . In 1856, he patented Parkesine, a celluloid based on nitrocellulose treated with a variety of solvents . This material, exhibited at the 1862 London International Exhibition, anticipated many of the modern aesthetic and utility uses of plastics . The industrial production of soap from vegetable oils was started by William Lever and his brother James in 1885 in Lancashire based on a modern chemical process invented by William Hough Watson that used glycerin and vegetable oils . </P>

Describe any three main features of chemical industry