THE 



LONDON, EDINBURGH and DUBLIN 



PHILOSOPHICAL MAGAZINE 



AND 



JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 



SUPPLEMENT to VOL. XUL FOURTH SERIES. 



LXIII. On the Sounds produced by the Combustion of Gases in 

 Tubes. Bij John Tyndall, F.R.S.* 



IN the first volume of Nicholson's Journal, published in 

 1802, the sounds produced by the combustion of hydrogen 

 in tubes are refei'red to as having been " made in Italy :" Dr. 

 Higgins, in the same place, shows that he had discovered them 

 in the year 1777, while observing the water formed in a glass 

 vessel by the slow combustion of a slender stream of hydrogen. 

 Chladui, in his 'Akustik,' published in 1802, page 74, speaks 

 of their being mentioned, and incorrectly explained, by De Luc 

 in his 'New Ideas on Meteorology :' I do not know the date of 

 the volume. Chladni himself showed that the tones produced 

 were the same as those of an open pipe of the same length as 

 the tube which encompassed the flame. He also succeeded in 

 obtaining a tone and its octave from the same tube, and in one 

 case obtained the fifth of the octave. In a paper published in 

 the Journal de Physique in 1802, G. De la Rive endeavoured to 

 account for the sounds by referring them to the alternate con- 

 traction and expansion of aqueous vapour ; basing his opinion 

 upon a series of experiments of great beauty and ingenuity 

 made with the bulbs of thermometers. In 1818 Mr. Faraday 

 took up the subjectf, and showed that the tones were pro- 

 duced when the glass tube was enveloped by an atmosphere higher 

 in temperature than 212° Fahr. That they were not due to 

 aqueous vapour, was further shown by the fact that they could 

 be produced by the combustion of carbonic oxide. He referred 

 the sounds to successive explosions produced by the periodic 

 combination of the atmospheric oxygen with the issuing jet of 

 hydrogen gas. This is undoubtedly the true source of the 

 sounds. 



I am not aware that the dependence of the pitch of the note 

 on the size of the flame has as yet been noticed. To this point 

 I will, in the first place, briefly direct attention. 



* Communicated by the Autlior. 



t Journal of Science and the Arts, vol, v. p. 274, 



Phil. May. S. 4. No. 89. Huppl. Vol. 13. 2 K 



