750 



SILLIMAN, BENJAMIN. 



In these furnaces the heat evolved by com- 

 bustion is superadded to that previously ac- 

 q'lired by the gases. Thus, in addition to the 

 economy, a greater intensity of heat is obtained 

 than is possible by ordinary combustion. In 

 fact, as the heat evolved in the furnace, or so 

 much of it as is not communicated to the 

 bodies exposed to its action, continually re- 

 turns to augment the new fuel, there appears 

 to be no limit in the temperature attainable, 

 except the power of resistance in the materials 

 of which the furnace is composed. 



Professor Faraday, in a recent lecture before 

 the Royal Institute, says: "The Sieman pro- 

 cess is founded on philosophical principles, and 

 is destined to play an important part in all 

 metallurgical operations." 



The new process is rapidly coming into use 

 in Europe. It is used in the manufacture of 

 heating gas in Paris, soma thirty producers 

 being erected to supply the city. In the zinc 

 and brass works of Germany it is also success- 

 fully applied, while in England there is scarcely 

 any branch of iron or steel working in which it 

 has not been thoroughly tested. 



The process was first introduced into this 

 country by Park Brothers, extensive manufac- 

 turers of steel and sheet copper, at Pittsburg. 



In the extensive flint glass works near Park 

 Brothers, Mr. Davis has tested the process for 

 eight months, with the most satisfactory results. 

 The furnaces formerly used about nine tons of 

 the best coal to do work which is now done by 

 about five tons of the poorest coal. The finest 

 quality of glass is made at these works. The 

 manageableness of the heat is shown by the 

 fact that a furnace exposed to a temperature 

 of 4,000, degrees showed no signs of fluxing, 

 the central pillars coming out with every 

 angle as sharp as when the heat was first 

 applied. 



SILLIMAN, BENJAMIX, LL.D., an American 

 physicist, born in North Stratford, Connecticut, 

 August 8, 1779, died at New Haven, Connecti- 

 cut, November 24, 1804. His father, Gold 

 Selleck Silliman, a graduate of Yale College in 

 1752, was a lawyer of distinction in Fairfield, 

 and during the Revolutionary war a brigadier- 

 general of the State militia. When the British 

 forces invaded the coast at New Haven, burning 

 towns and villages in their progress, the family 

 fled to North Stratford, now Trumbull, where, 

 as has been mentioned, the subject of our sketch 

 was born. Upon the death of his father, a few 

 years after, his education devolved upon the 

 widowed mother, and at thirteen years of age 

 he was fitted for college, graduating at Yale in 

 1796, among the first in his Ciass. In 1799 he 

 was appointed to a tutorship. It was his in 

 tention to enter upon the practise of law, fur 

 which he had begun to qualify himself by pro- 

 fessional studies ; but at the solicitation of Dr. 

 D wight, he consented to give up his chosen 

 course, and prepare himself for a professorship 

 of Chemistry and Geology. He accordingly 

 passed two years in study at Philadelphia, and 



on his return to New Haven in 1804, he deliv 

 ered his first course of lectures to the students 

 of Yale College. In 1805 he went to Europe 

 in order to profit by the teachings of eminent 

 men in London and Edinburgh, and after an 

 absence of fifteen months he returned to New 

 Haven, and published an account of his journey 

 and residence abroad in two duodecimo volumes. 

 Few American books of travels have ever been 

 so popular as this narrative of his European 

 observations. Not long afterward he made a 

 geological survey of part of his native State 

 which is believed to have been the first in a 

 s, -rii-s of scientific explorations now widely ex- 

 tended through America. 



In 1818, Professor Silliman founded the 

 " Ameiican Journal of Science and Arts," with 

 which his name is still connected. This Jour- 

 nal, now in its eighty-eighth volume, a survivor 

 of most of its contemporaries, has been recog- 

 nized at home and abroad for nearly fifty 

 years as the chief repository of American 

 Science. Its publication called for incessant 

 labor, as well as for heavy and unrequited out- 

 lays upon the part of the editor; but its ac- 

 knowledged services in the advancement and 

 diffusion of scientific learning, entitle its founder 

 to the honorable remembrance of every scholar. 



In 1807 Professor Silliman made a chemical 

 analysis of a meteorite of great size and bril- 

 liancy which had burst in the town of Weston, 

 Conn. He afterward assisted Dr. Hare in his 

 experiments with the oxy-hydrogen blowpipe, 

 and gave it the name of " compound blowpipe," 

 by which it is commonly known. This inven- 

 tion he applied to the fusion of a variety of 

 bodies before regarded as infusible. In 1822, 

 during the progress of some investigations con- 

 nected with the galvanic battery, he first estab- 

 lished the fact of the transfer of particles of 

 carbon from the positive to the negative pole, 

 and the retransfer when the points are shifted. 

 Professor Silliman was probably the first in 

 America to lecture before a miscellaneous au- 

 dience on scientific subjects. While discharging 

 his continuous duties as a college instructor and 

 as editor of a scientific journal, he was fre- 

 quently invited to give public lectures on Chem- 

 istry and Geology, and much of the interest now 

 manifested in those departments of science may 

 be traced to his influence. In Boston, New 

 York, Philadelphia, Washington, New Orleans, 

 St. Louis, and other large cities, he repeatedly 

 delivered a series of popular discourses, while 

 his more scientific lectures at New Haven have 

 attracted young men from every part of the 

 United States. Among the services which he 

 rendered at once to science and to his alma 

 mater, was the acquisition, by purchase, of the 

 Gibbs Cabinet, then altogether the best collec- 

 tion of minerals in the country, which by subse- 

 quent enlargement through his energetic efforts, 

 stands a memorial for him through all time. 

 He found great pleasure in helping forward 

 other men of science, his house and his labora- 

 tory always being open to receive them, and 



