In one instance, while in Europe, in 1806, at a public lecture, I
saw some of them exhibited by a celebrated Professor, who mentioned
Mr. Hare as the reputed author of the invention.
In December, 1811, I instituted an extended course of experiments
with Mr. Hare's blowpipe, in which I melted lime and magnesia, and
a long list of the most refractory minerals, gems, and others, the
greater part of which had never been melted before, and I supposed
that I had decomposed lime, barytes, strontites, and magnesia,
evolving their metallic basis, which burnt in the air as fast as
produced. I communicated a detailed account of my experiments to
the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, who published it in
their Transactions for 1812; with their leave it was communicated
to Dr Bruce's Mineralogical Journal, and it was printed in the 4th
number of that work. Hundreds of my pupils can testify that Mr.
Hare's splendid experiments, and many others performed with his
blowpipe, fed by oxygen and hydrogen gases, have been for years
past annually exhibited, in my public courses of chemistry in Yale
College, and that the fusion and volatilization of platina, and
the combustion of that metal, and of gold and silver, and of many
other metals; that the fusion of the earths, of rock crystal, of
gun flint, of the corundum gems, and many other, very refractory
substances; and the production of light beyond the brightness of
the sun, have been familiar experiments in my laboratory. I have
uniformly given Mr. Hare the full credit of the invention, although
my researches, with his instrument, had been pushed farther than
his own, and a good many new results added.
It is therefore with no small surprise that, in the Annales de
Chimie et de Physique, for September, 1816, I found a translation
of a very elaborate memoir, from a Scientific Journal, published
at the Royal Institution in London, in which a full account is
given of a very interesting series of experiments performed by
means of Mr. Hare's instrument; or rather one somewhat differently
arranged, but depending on the same principle. Mr. Hare's invention
is slightly mentioned in a note, but no mention is made of his
experiments, or of mine.
On a comparison of the memoir in question with Mr. Hare's and with
my own, I find that very many of the results are identical, and all
the new ones are derived directly from Mr. Hare's invention, with
the following differences.--In Mr. Hare's, the two gases were in
distinct reservoirs, to prevent explosion; they were propelled by
the pressure of a column of water, and were made to mingle, just
before their exit, at a common orifice. In the English apparatus,
the gases are both in one reservoir, and they are propelled by
their own elasticity, after condensation, by a syringe.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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