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XXIII. An Experimental Inquiry on the Action of Electricity on Gases . — I. On the 
Action of Electricity on Oxygen. By Sir B. C. Brodie, Bart., F.R.S. 
Received June 6, — Read June 20, 1872. 
The following pages contain the result of a prolonged series of experiments regarding 
the action of electricity upon certain kinds of gaseous matter. The instrument of this 
inquiry, by aid of which the gases were submitted to this action, is the induction-tube of 
W. Siemens*, an admirable and simple piece of apparatus, which enables us not only thus 
to operate upon the gases, but also to collect the products of the experiment with a view 
to their estimation and analysis. This instrument renders it practicable to utilize for 
the purposes of chemical investigation the vast powers of the coil of Ruhmkorff, and 
places at our disposal a new engine of research. The results at which I have already 
arrived are of sufficient importance to justify the anticipation that the changes thus 
produced by the action of electricity upon gases will prove to be a field of inquiry not 
inferior in interest to the electrolysis of liquids. In this first memoir I shall treat of 
the action of electricity upon oxygen gas, and in a subsequent inquiry, the results of 
which I hope speedily to lay before the Society, it is my intention to consider the action 
of electricity upon carbonic acid and carbonic oxide gas. 
The investigations of Schonbein in reference to ozone throw but little light upon its 
nature, mainly for the reason that this chemist neglected the use of the most fundamental 
instruments of chemical research, and rarely even attempted any quantitative valuation 
of its properties ; hence it is that we owe our most important knowledge upon this subject, 
not to Schonbein, who made it the study of his life, but to other investigators. 
In a paper published in the Archives of Electricity for 1845f, Marignac and De la 
Rive established the important fact that ozone is produced by the action of the electric 
spark upon pure and dry oxygen — a point which was further and conclusively demon- 
strated by the investigations of Fremy and Becquerel in 1852J, who also discovered 
that when electric sparks were passed through pure oxygen gas enclosed in a confined 
space in contact with a solution of iodide of potassium or with moistened silver, the 
oxygen was, after the lapse of sufficient time, totally and completely absorbed by those 
substances. It was thus proved that for the formation of ozone oxygen alone is required ; 
and these investigations effectually disposed of those theories, based upon inadequate or 
erroneous experiments, according to which the properties conferred upon oxygen by the 
action of electricity were regarded as due to the formation of minute quantities of 
nitrous acid or peroxide of hydrogen §. At the same time Marignac and De la Rive 
* Poggendorff’s Ann. vol. cii. p. 120. f Yol. v. p. 5. J Annales de Chimie, 3 S. vol. xxxv. p. 62. 
§ Williamson, Ann. Ch. Pharm. vol. lxi. p. 13. Baumert, Poggend. Ann. vol. lxxxix. p. 38. 
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MDCCCLXXII. 
