A History of Science — Volume 5Williams, Henry Smith
History
A History of Science — Volume 5
Williams, Henry Smith
Science -- History
Ingenious means of applying this principle, in connection with the means
previously employed, were developed independently by Pictet in Geneva
and Cailletet in Paris, and a little later by the Cracow professors
Wroblewski and Olzewski, also working independently. Pictet, working on
a commercial scale, employed a series of liquefied gases to gain lower
and lower temperatures by successive stages. Evaporating sulphurous acid
liquefied carbonic acid, and this in evaporating brought oxygen under
pressure to near its liquefaction point; and, the pressure being
suddenly released (a method employed in Faraday's earliest experiments),
the rapid expansion of the compressed oxygen liquefies a portion of
its substance. This result was obtained in 1877 by Pictet and Cailletet
almost simultaneously. Cailletet had also liquefied the newly discovered
acetylene gas. Five years later Wroblewski liquefied marsh gas, and the
following year nitrogen; while carbonic oxide and nitrous oxide yielded
to Olzewski in 1884. Thus forty years of effort had been required to
conquer five of Faraday's refractory gases, and the sixth, hydrogen,
still remains resistant. Hydrogen had, indeed, been seen to assume the
form of visible vapor, but it had not been reduced to the so-called
static state--that is, the droplets had not been collected in an
appreciable quantity, as water is collected in a cup. Until this should
be done, the final problem of the liquefaction of hydrogen could not be
regarded as satisfactorily solved.
More than another decade was required to make this final step in the
completion, of Faraday's work. And, oddly enough, yet very fittingly,
it was reserved for Faraday's successor in the chair at the Royal
Institution to effect this culmination. Since 1884 Professor Dewar's
work has made the Royal Institution again the centre of low-temperature
research. By means of improved machinery and of ingenious devices for
shielding the substance operated on from the accession of heat, to which
reference will be made more in detail presently, Professor Dewar was
able to liquefy the gas fluorine, recently isolated by Moussan, and the
recently discovered gas helium in 1897. And in May, 1898, he was able to
announce that hydrogen also had yielded, and for the first time in
the history of science that* elusive substance, hitherto "permanently"
gaseous, was held as a tangible liquid in a cuplike receptacle; and this
closing scene of the long struggle was enacted in the same laboratory in
which Faraday performed the first liquefaction experiment with chlorine
just three-quarters of a century before.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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