A.D. 1797.—Bressy (Joseph), French physician and able chemist, remarks, in his “Essai sur l’électricité de l’eau,” that the electric fluid is composed of three beams (rayons, i. e. rays, gleams, or sparks), vitreous, resinous and vital; that three principal agents exist in nature, viz. the air, isolating body; the water, conducting body, and movement, determining action; that vapours resolve themselves into clouds merely because friction enables the electric fluid to seize upon the aqueous molecules, and that, in water, the hydrogen is maintained in the form of gas by the electric fluid, while the oxygen becomes gaseous under influence of the caloric.
References.—Larousse, “Dict. Univ.,” Vol. II. p. 1236; Delaunay, “Manuel,” etc., 1809, pp. 15, 16.
A.D. 1797.—Treméry (Jean Louis), a French mining engineer, communicates his observations on elliptic magnets through Bulletin No. 6 of the “Société Philomathique” as well as through the sixth volume of the Journal des Mines.
His observations on conductors of electricity and on the emission of the electric fluid appear at p. 168 Vol. XLVIII of the Jour. de Phys., and in “Bull. de la Soc. Philom.,” No. 19, while his views in opposition to the two-fluid theory are to be found in Bulletin No. 63 of the last-named publication as well as in Jour. de Phys., Vol. LIV. p. 357.
References.—Poggendorff, Vol. II. p. 1131; John Farrar, “Elem. of Elec.,” etc., p. 120.
A.D. 1797.—Pearson (George), English physician and chemist, communicates to the Royal Society a very interesting paper entitled, “Experiments and Observations made with the view of ascertaining the nature of the gas produced by passing electric discharges through water; with a description of the apparatus for these experiments.”
An abstract of the above appears in the Phil. Trans. for 1797, and a full transcript of it is to be found in Nicholson’s Journal, 4to, Vol. I. pp. 241–248, 299–305, and 349–355.
As Mr. Wilkinson has it, “Dr. Pearson supposes the decomposition of water by electricity to be effected by the interposition of the dense electric fire, between the constituent elements of the water, which he places beyond the sphere of attraction for each other, each ultimate particle of oxygen and hydrogen uniting with a determinate quantity of the electric fire to bestow on them their gaseous form. Hence the doctor supposes that the electric fire, after effecting the disunion, assumes the state of caloric.
“On the reproduction of water by the passage of an electric spark through a proportionate quantity of oxygen and hydrogen gases, Dr. Pearson ingeniously conjectures that by the influence of the electric flame the ultimate particles of these gases, the nearest to the flame, are driven from it in all directions, so as to be brought within the sphere of each other’s attractions. In one of these cases Dr. Pearson supposes that the caloric destroys the attraction, which in the other instance it occasions.
“It is with diffidence that I take on me to controvert the opinions of this very respectable physician; but I presume that the whole of the phenomena of the synthesis and analysis of water are more readily to be explained on the principles I have laid down than by the adoption of the mysterious terms of attraction and repulsion. By the operation of galvanism, water is more rapidly decomposed than by common electricity. In this operation there is no evolution of dense electrical fire, but merely a current of a small intensity of electricity acting permanently and incessantly. To reproduce water, a flame must be generated sufficient to kindle the contiguous portion of the hydrogen gas, then the next portion, and so on, the combustion being preserved by the presence of the oxygen gas. As these processes proceed with immense rapidity as soon as the gases are intermixed, so as to appear like one sudden explosion, the caloric of each of them being thus disengaged, their bases unite and constitute water.”