Background
Laucks was born on July 3, 1882 in Akron, Ohio, United States; the son of Morris B. and Louisa M. (Fink) Laucks.
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2015
Laucks was born on July 3, 1882 in Akron, Ohio, United States; the son of Morris B. and Louisa M. (Fink) Laucks.
Laucks graduated with second honors from his high school class in Akron in January 1900. He studied at the Case School (the Case Western Reserve University) from 1900 to 1905. There Irving studied mining engineering and chemistry.
Irving began his career in 1908, when he with a chemist Myrl J. Faulkenberg founded a laboratory in Seattle. They assayed and tested ores and minerals there. During this work, Laucks became very interested in the characteristics of soybean cake and he had some of it analyzed to determine its composition. In 1918, Lauks and Faulkenberg dissolved their partnership, with Laucks retaining the analytical laboratory, which he renamed I. F. Laucks, Inc. In April 1920 his company began publication of a monthly newsletter titled Laucks` Note Book.
In late 1922, he met chemist Bill Bailey, who researched plywood glue. Irving agreed to analyze Bailey’s casein glue and also to institute studies to develop an improved glue. So he set to work trying to make a glue from imported soybean cake. By 1923 Laucks felt he had developed a satisfactory soybean glue. In 1923, Irving began to sell his soybean glue to Olympia Veneer. At about this time Laucks renamed his analytical laboratory Laucks Laboratories, Inc., keeping the name I. F. Laucks, Inc. for the company that developed and produced his plywood glues. Laucks’ two key technical men involved in the research and development on soybean glue were Glen Davidson and Charles Cone. Prior to 1927, in addition to glue, the company also did research and applied for patents on carbon briquettes bound together by a soy adhesive, soybean plastics, and soy protein paper sizing.
During the period 1926-1934 extensive research on soybean glues and other related soy products was done by Laucks’ researchers and at least 38 patents were applied for and issued. By 1927 Laucks’ was calling his new soybean glue Lauxein.
By the late 1920s Laucks was finding it very difficult to obtain enough soybean cake. So he decided to develop his own source in the Midwest. In 1927, he arranged with the Funk Brothers Seed Company, a soybean crusher in Bloomington, Illinois, to make him soy flour and ship it to his plant in Seattle.
That company continued for a few years to make the flour from their soybean meal and to deliver it to Laucks for processing into glue. Laucks later installed his own machinery to process the meal into flour. Laucks operated in Bloomington until 1934. At times he took as much as one third of Funk Brothers’ production of meal.
In October 1931, Laucks and Glen Davidson presented the first summary of their work with soybean glues at the annual meeting of the wood industries in North Carolina. It noted that in plywood manufacture the tonnage of soybean glue (called generically "oil-seed-residue glue") equaled that of any other type of glue.
In 1934, Laucks shut down his operations with Funk Brothers in Bloomington, Illinois, and built a soy flour and soybean glue plant in Norfolk, Virginia, in order to be close to the source of North Carolina soybeans and to expand the company’s glue operations to the East Coast of the United States.
In later years, Laucks eventually perfected a soybean glue suitable for a hot press operation. He introduced it at the Wheeler-Osgood Company in Tacoma. In 1942, Laucks retired and moved to Orcas Island, in the San Juan Islands, in northwest Washington. But he kept up his interest in the plywood and soybean industries. The same year his company published a book titled "Technique of Plywood" by Charles B. Norris. In 1943, he wrote two articles summarizing his life’s work with plywood and glues in "Chemurgic Digest".
In 1950 most of I. F. Laucks, Inc. was sold to the Monsanto Chemical Company, but the original laboratory in Seattle was purchased by two of its older employees. Laucks Testing Laboratories, Inc. is still operating in Seattle, Washington.
In 1953, Irving Laucks moved to Healdsburg, Sonoma County, California. That year his book titled "A Speculation in Reality", about science and psychic research, was published by the Philosophical Library in New York.
Irving was the founder of I. F. Laucks, Inc. It was involved in the development of America’s first commercial isolated soy proteins. In 1938 he was granted his first and only foreign patent for improvements in soybean gluing.
He discovered that after the plywood had been moistened (as by rain) and remained under certain conditions or moisture and warmth, certain fungi (especially molds) grew on the glueline and digested the protein in the glue, thus causing delamination.
Laucks was a member of American Chemical Society, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Institute of Chemical Engineers, Kappa Sigma.
On June 30, 1909 Irving Laucks married Helen Viola Thompson. They had a son, John Thompson Laucks and a daughter, Helen Virginia Laucks. On November 9, 1942 Laucks married Eulah Croson.
She was born on May 26, 1916 in King County, Washington, United States.
He was born on February 2, 1922 in Seattle, Washington.
