Triumphs and Wonders of the 19th Century: The True Mirror of a Phenomenal Era / A volume of original, entertaining and instructive historic and descriptive writings, showing the many and marvellous achievements which distinguish an hundred years of material, intellectual, social and moral progress

by James P. Boyd

XI. ELECTRO-CHEMISTRY.

The electric furnace, which affords a higher heat than chemists had been able to secure, has been the promoter of great advances in inorganic chemistry. Moissan (b. 1852), a French chemist, has been the most successful in applying the heat of the electric furnace to analytic and synthetic studies. One of the practical results which has come from these studies has been the virtual bridging over of the chasm which has been supposed to exist between organic and inorganic compounds. Under the influence of the heat of the electric furnace, carbon, which is the keystone of organic compounds, has been made to combine directly with the metals, forming a series of bodies known as metallic carbides. The carbide of calcium, under the action of water, yields a gas known as acetylene, which by a series of reactions can be converted into alcohol. Thus alcohol, which only a short time ago was supposed to be solely the product of organic life, is shown also to result from a simple inorganic reaction such as has been shown above.

The importance of electrolysis in metallurgical and analytical chemistry has already been noticed. So rapid has been the progress along these lines that the terms metallurgical chemistry and electro-chemistry are in some respects almost synonymous.

Electricity has also been employed in many of the chemical arts; e. g., in the promotion of crystallization and purification of organic solutions as practiced in the sugar industry.

DRIVING A NAIL WITH A HAMMER MADE OF FROZEN MERCURY.

Though belonging rather to analytical than to electro-chemistry, one may here mention the wonders of that discovery which belongs to the close of the nineteenth century, and which is known as “liquid air.” Until 1877 air—oxygen and nitrogen—was regarded as a permanent gas. Oxygen liquefies at 300° below zero and nitrogen at 320°. When air is cooled to those degrees it assumes a misty form and falls like raindrops to the bottom of the vessel. It then gives off vapor, like boiling water. If poured out on a conductor, as iron or ice, it assumes the gaseous state so rapidly as to amount to an explosion. The many experiments with it are simply wonderful, and the practical claims for it are without end. Already it runs an engine and motor vehicles. It is claimed that it will complete the problem of aerial navigation; that it is the coming power in gunnery and blasting; that it affords the ideal sanitation; that in surgery it offers the most perfect chemical cauterization.