690 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



It is tlius that a heterogenous mass of facts has been accumu- 

 lated, upon which a varied fashion has been established, rather 

 than a solid system, such as a'n exact science would aspire to, 

 governed by, and based upon, some fixed and guiding laws, upon 

 which its phenomena and correct practice would unfailingly 

 depend . 



In regard to this comparatively neglected field, the chemistry 

 of steam, I assert that it is susceptible of the clearest proof that 

 all its phenomena, whether useful or detrimental, are fundamen- 

 tally of an electrical nature, and controlled by electrical laws, 

 from the condensation or vaporization of a drop of dew to the 

 explosion of a steam boiler, or the formation of an iceberg. 



I would say, as it were in parenthesis, that I have spent several 

 years, and some thousands of dollars, in experimental study of 

 the fundamental laws of electricity, principally in regard to their 

 relation to meteorology, and to steam as a motive agent, and from 

 scores of reasons and experiments, I have become convinced that 

 during the process of forming steam, the water takes up what we 

 recognize by the term heat, so long as its increment maybe noted 

 by the thermometer, but at the instant a particle of water at the 

 boiling point fl.ies into elastic vapor at the same temperature, it 

 takes up what would be more properly expressed as comhined 

 electricity^ than by the usual term of latent heat; a term in it- 

 self, in some respects, paradoxical. In either case the develop- 

 ment of this electricity arising from the combustion in the 

 furnace, and due probably to the greatly less specific electricity 

 (hitherto, I believe, unrecognized,) of the products than of the 

 elements of combustion; of carbonic acid, than of the oxygen siadi 

 the combustible. 



Steam, at the atmospheric pressure, for instance, instead of be- 

 ing water combined with 212 degrees or nominal units of sensible 

 heat, added to 990 "latent," may be more truly described as 

 water impressed with 212 degrees of temperature, and combined 

 with 990 equivalents of electricity. 



Every body has a specific electricity, the equivalent of, and 

 identical with, what is now termed its specific heat, which means 

 simply the quantity of heat converted by any means into the con- 

 dition called latent, while that body is being elevated to any 

 given temperature, which is only an attendant condition, and this 

 latent heat, so called, is in truth combined electricity, the attend- 

 ing temperature, by its very presence, as it were, causing the 

 given body to have a stronger affinity for, and power to receive 

 and convert this electricity into a latent " specific," or combined 



