ROBERT HARE. ^7 



power far transcending anything he had ever known before ; 

 and this, though the facts on which it was based were not un- 

 known. 



Lavoisier had directed a jet of oxygen on charcoal and had 

 burned the elements of water together ; but even he, and in the 

 face of these experiments, had failed to comprehend the power 

 of this heating apparatus, and it was left for the acumen of 

 Hare to demonstrate it and make it practically applicable. 

 The author of the biography in the American Journal of Sci- 

 ence says of it, " In our view, Dr. Hare's merit as a scientific 

 philosopher is more clearly established upon this discovery 

 than upon any other of the numerous contributions he has 

 made to science." Dr. Hare's original experiments were re- 

 peated in 1802 and 1803 in the presence of Dr. Priestley and 

 Messrs. Silliman, Woodhouse, and others. In recognition of 

 the discovery, Dr. Hare received the Rumford medal from the 

 American Academy of Science at Boston. An attempt was 

 afterward made, in 1819, by Dr. Clarke, of Edinburgh, to rob 

 him of the credit of this discovery ; and though he showed 

 that the oxhydrogen apparatus had been before the public 

 several years, no attention was paid to his protests. The 

 calcium and Drummond lights also furnish instances of most 

 important applications of Dr. Hare's invention, in which 

 no reference is made to him. He himself led the way to 

 these devices by constructing an apparatus on a gigantic 

 scale, with large vessels of wrought iron, capable of sustain- 

 ing the pressure of the Fairmount Water Works, with which 

 he was able to fuse at one operation nearly two pounds of 

 platinum, with a resultant production of metal greatly pu- 

 rified. 



He devoted much labour and skill to the construction 

 of new and improved forms of the voltaic pile; "and it 

 is easy to show," Prof. Silliman says, " that owing to his 

 zeal and skill in this department of physics American 

 chemists were enabled to employ with distinguished success 

 the intense powers of extended series of voltaic couples long 

 in advance of the general use of similar contrivances in 

 Europe." 



In 1816 Dr. Hare constructed an instrument called the calo- 

 rimeter, in which great extent of surface was obtained by com- 

 bining many large plates of zinc and copper into one series, 



