Abstract
DURING his researches upon flame,2 Sir Humphry Davy discovered, in 1817, that the constituents of a combustible mixture will combine slowly below the ignition temperature; this led him to inquire whether, seeing that the temperatures of flames far exceed those at which solids become incandescent, a metallic wire can be maintained at incandescence by the combination of gases at its surface, without actual flame. He thereupon tried the effect of introducing a warm platinum wire into a jar containing a mixture of coal-gas and air rendered non-explosive by an excess of the combustible constituents; the wire immediately became red hot, and continued so until nearly the whole of the oxygen had disappeared.
Article PDF
References
From a discourse delivered at the Royal Institution on Friday, February 27, by Prof. W. A. Bone, F.R.S.
Collected Works, vol. vi., p. 8.
Journal of Gas Lighting, 1887, i, p. 168.
Bone and Wheeler, Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc., 1906 (A. 206, pp. 167), also further (unpublished) results (190512) in collaboration with Messrs. G. W. Andrew, A. Forshaw, and H. Hartley, which are summarised in Berichte der Deutschen Chem. Ges., 1913.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Surface Combustions 1 . Nature 93, 202–206 (1914). https://doi.org/10.1038/093202a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/093202a0