Abstract
AMONG the numerous subjects which have engrossed the attention of the knowledge-seekers of the present century, probably none have surpassed in fascination and in the wealth of results which have followed persistent effort the question of the possibility of liquefying those gases which for ages had been considered permanent. Immediately after that epoch-making period in chemistry and physics, when Faraday, following in the footsteps of North more who in 1806 had succeeded in liquefying chlorine, announced to the world the fruitful results of his experiments upon the liquefaction of gaseous sulphurous, carbonic, and hydrochloric acids, nitrous oxide, cyanogen, and ammonia, came a long interval, during which all attempts to induce hydrogen, oxygen, nitric oxide, marsh gas, arid carbon monoxide to take up the liquid state yielded little more than negative results, and the subject appeared almost without hope. When one looks back to the end of the year 1877 and remembers the thrill of excitement which ran through the civilized world when the double announcement was made by the French Academicians that oxygen had been independently liquefied by Cailletet and Pictet, and then, in the mind's eye, reverts to the long years of trial and experiment during which these and other workers were slowly but surely building up future success on present failure, one cannot but be cheered by the thought that patient work inevitably brings its own reward. The fundamental principle upon which both based their experiments was, that the gases must be simultaneously exposed to very high pressures and to temperatures lower than their critical points. Pictet, whose apparatus was a triumph of mechanical skill, evolved his gas to be liquefied from a strong wrought-iron cylinder, from whence it passed intb a closed copper tube surrounded by a cold bath of rapidly evaporating liquefied carbon dioxide, which reduced the temperature to -130° C. Cailletet arrived at the same end by using a hydraulic press to compress his gas, but instead of using a very cold bath he caused the gas to effect its own reduction of temperature by suddenly releasing the pressure, causing rapid evaporation, and hence such a considerable cooling that the gas condensed in drops of liquid. Pictet, oh January 10, 1878, further succeeded in crowning, his results by liquefying hydrogen at a pressure of 650 atmospheres and at a temperature of -140°, and finally, on releasing the pressure, by actually solidifying the hydrogen, which fell “like so many drops of steel ” upon the ground.
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TUTTON, A. Condensation of Gases . Nature 36, 105–107 (1887). https://doi.org/10.1038/036105a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/036105a0