224 EDWARD DIVERS AND TAMEMASA HAGA ; 



chemists who worked upon the action of ammonia upon methyl sul- 

 phate before Berglund were Dumas and Péligot in 1836, and they 

 only observed that the two substances interact violently, when an 

 aqueous solution of ammonia is added to the undiluted methyl 

 sulphate, and, without quantitative analysis of the products, represented 

 them to be methyl alcohol and methyl amidosulphonate (' sulpho- 

 methylane '). Strecker, in 1850, had, indeed, found that ethyl sulphate 

 and ammonia combine together, but into a product which he called 

 ammonium sulphethamate ; and it used, therefore, to be supposed that the 

 action of ammonia upon that sulphate was quite different from that 

 upon methyl sulphate. Strecker, however, did observe that his com- 

 plex salt gave ethylamine when heated, although from this weighty 

 fact he deduced nothing. 



Preparation of the acid. 



Amidosulphonic acid may be advantageously prepared in two 

 ways, one being based upon the sulphonation of hydroxylamine, and 

 the other upon the hydrolysis of imidosulphonic acid. Both hydroxyl- 

 amine and imidosulphonic acid are obtainable in several ways, but both 

 of them best from the sulphonation of sodium nitrite and hydrolysis 

 of the suitable sulphonate. It is, therefore, from sodium nitrite that 

 amidosulphonic acid will, on economical grounds, be prepared, in either 

 case. The production of the acid through imidosulphonic acid is 

 much more profitable, as regards time, labour, and yield, than its 

 production through hydroxylamine ; but there must, for the present, be 

 taken into consideration the facts that hydroxylamine hydrochloride is 

 at hand in most laboratories, and that, beginning with it as the source, 

 the preparation of the acid is easier than to begin with sodium nitrite. 

 For, these facts will preserve the usefulness of the hydroxylamine 



