Abstract
Expressing my best thanks to Prof. Bunsen for the above statement, I beg to add, that since 1860 I have been using for laboratory purposes a water-trompe, as described by me in Poggendorff's Annalen for 1861, vol. cxii., which (by reversing the action) led me in 1863 to the new method of air-rarefaction. Water was the first liquid, which I used in my first pump, constructed during the summer of 1863. But the fallacies arising from the tension of aqueous vapour and from the air absorbed in water, as well as the inconvenience of having to provide for the requisite fall, caused me to discontinue the use of water, and to substitute in its stead mercury as the most suitable liquid for establishing the truth, which I had recognised by means of a water-air-pump with an insufficient fall. My paper of 1865 was written with reference to all liquids; in fact, on p. 15 (rendered prominent by italics) I summed up thus:—
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SPRENGEL, H. [Letters to Editor]. Nature 7, 241 (1873). https://doi.org/10.1038/007241b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/007241b0
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