366 



NA TURK 



[February 14, 189- 



WroblewsWi ; to annihilate myself, and thereby lo magnify the 

 cUums for originilily of Pr.jf. Olszew ki. In spite of the mis- 

 takei inevitable to pioneer-, the work of Caillelei and Piciet 

 must aUay; be credited wiih originating research in this depart- 

 ment. To show my apprecatua of such invesiigation, and 

 to give it a wide publicity in the year 187S, a Friday 

 evening iddrcsi was devoted 10 the work ol Caillctet and 

 Pictel, during the course of which 1 sho*ei for the first time 

 in this country the working of the Cailleiel apparatus. Simi- 

 larly, in the year 18S4, an ad Iress was given on ihe woik of 

 Wroblewski and Olszewski, in ihe course of which I illustialed 

 for the first time in public the l.quefaciion cf oxygen and air, 

 showing the boiling point, &c., by means of a simple form 

 of apparata* which did not involve the use of the Cailleiet 

 pump as employed br these experimenters. To deliver a lec- 

 ture on the work of 01 her people is generally considered a 

 mark of honour, and as usefully diffusing a knowledge of the 

 same. The cii ic has for .-ome object omiited half the opening 

 sentence of this address, wliich runs as follows : — 



"The t*o Russian chemist-, .M.M. Wroblewski and Olszewski, 

 who have recently made smh a splendid success in the proiluc- 

 tion and maintenance of low temp-rature, have u.ed m their 

 researches an enlarged form of the well-known Caillcei appa- 

 ratus ; but for the purpo-e of lecture demonstration, wliich 

 necessarily involves the projection on a screen ol the actions 

 taking place, the appara'us represented in ihe annexed wojdcut 

 15 more readily and quitkl) handled, and enabUscomparatively 

 large quantiiies of liquid ox)gen to be (.roduced." 



The same tactics have lieen adopted of taking half a sentence 

 from another part of the a IJress, and leaving out the context. 

 The sentence to which I relet ran thus : — 



" ProiiJtd a supply of bijuid ethylnii can be had, there is no 

 difficulty in refeatiug all the experiments of the Russian 

 observers ; but as this gas is trouliicsomc to make in quanliiy, 

 and cannot be bought like carbonic acid or nitrous oxide, 

 such expel iments necessitate a considerable sacrifice of time. 

 It was therefore with considerable saiisfaction iha, I observed 

 the production of liquid oxygen by the use of solid carbonic 

 acid, or, preferably, liquid nitrous oxide." _ 



Then follows a full description of how to use nitroiis oxide 

 with the apparatus in order to get liquid oxygen. Note the 

 disingenuous comment of the critic : " No claim is made here 

 to originality in the essentials of the apparatus, nor in the ex- 

 periments performed." It has never been the custom to make 

 public claims for originaluy, either in apparatus or experiment, 

 in ibe course of an address given at the Royal Institution. 

 lie proceeds to allege, "the apparatus referred to by 

 I'rof. Dewar in bis lecture of June, 1884, was used by 

 I'rof. OsMWski in 1883." On turning to the reference given, 

 1 find the following statement by Olszewski : "In 18S3, and 

 fjr several years following, I liquefied the gases in a strong glass 

 lube." According to this distortion of lad, the apparatus of 

 Andrews, CaiUetcl, Wroblewski, and Dewar are all the same, 

 because gas was liquefied in a glass tube. I challenge the pro- 

 duction of a refeience to an apparatus antecedent to the date of 

 this lecture in which liquid nitrous oxide had been used for the 

 production of liquid oxygen. But all this is ancient history ; 

 the real charge begins wuh the year 1890. Assuming that 1 

 had been the thief of I'rof. Olszewski's apparatus of 1S90, which 

 is alleged lo be the type used in the laraday Commemoration 

 Lecture of 1891, ^uha: explanation is forthcoming of the delay 

 of four yean in ventilalin); the question of priority and personal 

 grievance I H'hat his oicurred at the present juncture to pre 

 ctpilalc a crisis/ Can any one avoid coming to the conclu 

 tioo thai I'rof. Olszewski's contact with "Argon" explains 

 the iuddcn asiault upon my labours in the same field of 

 investigation. ... 



If the critic had been a Iruttworthy person even to examine 

 into the published factn, he could have found a reference in ihe 

 Pro^eedtuf^s of the k'lyal Institution, between the )ears 1878 

 and 1893, that would have enlightened his ignorance, and 

 thereby prevented his reiterating I'lof. (Jlszewski's suggestion 

 that my large apparatus of 1891, which produced pints of 

 liquid oxygen, wa* copied or borrowed from a description in 

 the Cracovie liullctm for 1890. ... 



Let us see what I'rof. 0.>zew-ki laid in that paper, cDtitled 

 "Tran*va«enicnt de Toxygenc liquide," June 1890 : — 



" A flask (if wrought iron, five litres in cap.icily (such as is 

 utcd to hold liquid laibon dioxide), containing oxygen under a 



NO. 1320, VOL. 51] 



pres.sure of 80 aim., is joined by a narrow copper tube to the 

 upper end of a steel cylinder tested at a pressure of 200 at m. 

 This cylinder having a capacity of 30-100 cub. centim., accord- 

 ing to ihe quantity of oxygen which we wish to liquefy at a time, 

 is immersed in liquid ethylene, of which the tempcraiure may 

 easily be lowered to 140 c. by means of an air-pump. The 

 lower end of the cylinder is joined by a narrow cop^ier tube to 

 a little stopcock, through which the oxyijen, liquefied in the 

 cylinder, can be poured down into an open glass vessel, kept 

 cool by the surrounding air." 



In o her words, replace the glass tube in'my apparatus of 1SS4 

 by a small steel cylinder, and attach to its lower end a narrow 

 copper tulie with a stopcock, and the O szewski apparatus of 

 1890 is produced (as a matter of fact, Piciet had used the same 

 principle in the year 1S7S). Now, on June tl, 1S86, I delivered 

 a lec'ure on " Kecent Researches on Meteorites," and the report 

 in the /"/vcVti/rV/iVof the Royal Institution contains a sectional 

 drawing of an apparatus solely construe ed of c ipper, to- 

 gether with a valve for drawing ofif iiqui 1 oxygen, en- 

 tiiely different in type from the cude plan Olszewski 

 adopted in 1890. I may mention tha' the p'an of the apparatus 

 was reproduced immediately afier the delivery of the lecture, 

 both in England and .\aierica. The section is confined to the 

 refrigerator, all the acce-sories of liquefied and compressed gas 

 bottles, compteision and exhaust g.iusjes, &c., having been 

 omitted. From this plan of the refrigeratir, any person so 

 desiring could increase its capacity so-a; to woik on a larger 

 scale. The drawing shows the apparatus arranged for the 

 special experiment of ejccing liquid oxygen into a vacuum 

 chamber, but it is clear the apparal us discharged as easily into an 

 open vessel. It ii not any isolated experiment thit is in dis- 

 pute, but the new foim of apparatus. The special object for 

 which liquid oxygen was in use in this lecture, was to cool a 

 piece of meteorite before insertion into an electric furnace. The 

 following extract fiom the lecture will explain how the subject 

 was introduced : — 



" Meteorites, no doubt, have an exceedingly low temperature 

 before they enter the earth's atmosphere, and the q leslion had 

 been raised as to whit chemical reactions could take place under 

 such conditions. It resulted from Prof. Uewar's investigations 

 that at a temperature of about 130" C, liquid oxygen bad no 

 chemical action upon hydrogrn, potassium, sodium, phos 

 phoius, hydriodic acid or sulphydric acid. It would appear, 

 therefore, that as lli; absolute zero is approached, even the 

 strongest chemical affinities are inactive. 



"The lecturer exhibited at work the apparatus by which he 

 had recently succeeded in solidifying oxygen. The apparatus 

 is illustiated in the accompanying diagram, where a copper 

 tube is seen passing through a vessel kept constantly full of ether 

 and solid carbonic acid ; ethylene is sent through this tube, and 

 is liquefied by the intense cold ; it is then conveyed by the 

 tube, through an india-rubber stopper, into the lower vessel ; 

 the outer one is filled with ether and solid carbonic acid. .V 

 continuous copper tube, about 45 feet long, conveying oxygen, 

 passes through the outer vessel, and then through that contain- 

 ing the liquid ethylene ; the Utter evaporates through the space 

 I between the two vessels, an 1 thus intense cold is produced, 

 whereby oxygen is liquefied in the tube to the extent 

 occasionally of 22 cubic centimetres at one time. The tempera- 

 ture ai which this is effected is about - 130° C., at a pressure of 

 75 atmospheres ; but less pressure will suffice. When lli; 

 oxygen is known to be liquid, by means of a g.iuge near the 

 oxygen inlet, the valve A is opened, and the liquid oxygen 

 rushes into a vacuum in the central gl.ass lube below ; some 

 liquid ethylene a' the bottom of the next tube outwards is also 

 caused to evaporate into a vacuum at the same moment, and 

 instantly some of the liquid oxygen in the central tub; becomes 

 solid, owing to Ihe inttiue cold of the double evaporation. The 

 outer glass vessel serves to keep moisture from settling on the 

 sides of the ethylene tube. By means of the electric lantern 

 and a lens, an image of this part of the apparaius w.u pro- 

 jected upon the screen, this being Ihe first time that the 

 experiment had been shown on a large scale in public. 



" I'erfrnming this experiment, the temperature reached was a 

 little below 2Co' C, that is, only 50' or 70 above the absolute 

 zero of temperature, .".nd in the experiment about 5 lbs. of liquid 

 ethylene were employed." 



This I declare to be the firsl apparatus made wholly of metal, 

 being an arrangemciit of copper coils, in which liquid oxygcii 



