He proceeded to experiment with a number of
other gases subjected in sealed tubes to the pressure caused by their
own continuous production by chemical action, and in the course of a few
weeks liquefied sulphurous acid, sulphuretted hydrogen, carbonic acid,
euchlorine, nitrous acid, cyanogen, ammonia and muriatic acid, the last
of which, however, had previously been obtained by Davy. But he failed
with hydrogen, oxygen, fluoboric, fluosilicic and phosphuretted hydrogen
gases (_Phil. Trans._, ib. pp. 189-198). Early in the following year he
published an "Historical statement respecting the liquefaction of gases"
(_Quart. Journ. Sci._, 1824, 16, pp. 229-240), in which he detailed
several recorded cases in which previous experimenters had reduced
certain gases to their liquid state.
In 1835 Thilorier, by acting on bicarbonate of soda with sulphuric acid
in a closed vessel and evacuating the gas thus obtained under pressure
into a second vessel, was able to accumulate large quantities of liquid
carbonic acid, and found that when the liquid was suddenly ejected into
the air a portion of it was solidified into a snow-like substance (_Ann.
chim. phys._, 1835, 60, pp. 427-432). Four years later J. K. Mitchell in
America, by mixing this snow with ether and exhausting it under an air
pump, attained a minimum temperature of 146° below zero F., by the aid
of which he froze sulphurous acid gas to a solid.
Stimulated by Thilorier's results and by considerations arising out of
the work of J. C. Cagniard de la Tour (_Ann. chim. phys._, 1822, 21, pp.
127 and 178, and 1823, 22, p. 410), which appeared to him to indicate
that gases would pass by some simple law into the liquid state, Faraday
returned to the subject about 1844, in the "hope of seeing nitrogen,
oxygen and hydrogen either as liquid or solid bodies, and the latter
probably as a metal" (_Phil. Trans._, 1845, 135, pp. 155-157). On the
basis of Cagniard de la Tour's observation that at a certain temperature
a liquid under sufficient pressure becomes a vapour or gas having the
same bulk as the liquid, he inferred that "at this temperature or one a
little higher, it is not likely that any increase of pressure, except
perhaps one exceedingly great, would convert the gas into a liquid." He
further surmised that the Cagniard de la Tour condition might have its
point of temperature for oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, &c., below that
belonging to the bath of solid carbonic acid and ether, and he realized
that in that case no pressure which any apparatus would be able to bear
would be able to bring those gases into the liquid or solid state, which
would require a still greater degree of cold. To fulfil this condition
he immersed the tubes containing his gases in a bath of solid carbonic
acid and ether, the temperature of which was reduced by exhaustion under
the air pump to -166° F., or a little lower, and at the same time he
subjected the gases to pressures up to 50 atmospheres by the use of two
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