A.D. 1803.—Berthollet (Claude Louis de), very eminent French scientist, who was the first of the leading chemists to openly endorse the antiphlogistic doctrine propounded by Lavoisier (A.D. 1781), and who with Laplace founded the well-known scientific Société d’Arcueil, admits in his “Essai de Statique Chimique” the analogy existing between caloric and the electric fluid. He believes that the latter during the oxidation of metals does not give out much heat, but causes only a dilatation of bodies which separates their molecules, and he also believes that electricity aids metallic oxidation by lessening cohesion (Delaunay, “Manuel de l’Electricité,” p. 16).
When Berthollet and Charles passed heavy electrical charges through platinum wire, they observed that the latter acquired a temperature about equal to that of boiling water, and therefore not sufficient to fuse the wire. If the metal is one easily oxidized, the separation of the molecules causes them to unite with the oxygen of the air, and it is therefore the oxidation itself which produces the consequent high degree of heat.
References.—“Essai de Statique,” Vol. I. pp. 209 and 263. See also “Biographie Générale,” Vol. V. p. 716; Young’s “Lectures,” London, 1807, Vol. II. p. 423, and Nicholson’s Journal, Vol. VIII. p. 80; Larousse, “Dict. Univ.,” Vol. II. p. 617; “Sci. Papers of Roy. Soc.,” Vol. I. pp. 321–323; Sir H. Davy, “Bakerian Lectures,” London 1840, pp. 41, 94, regarding more particularly Berthollet’s elaborate experiments on the decomposition of ammonia by electricity alluded to in Mém. de l’Acad., 1782, p. 324, also Delaunay, “Manuel,” pp. 17, 150.
A.D. 1804.—Jacotot (Pierre), Professor of Astronomy at the Lyceum of Dijon, states, at p. 223, Vol. I of his “Eléments de Physique Expérimentale,” that Wlik, teacher of natural philosophy at Stockholm, invented the electrophorus during the year 1762. Jacotot, of course, refers to Johannes Carolus Wilcke (see A.D. 1757) who, during the month of August 1762, constructed a resinous apparatus to which he gave the name of perpetual electrophorus (Scripta Academiæ Suec., 1762). Books V, VI and VII of the same volume treat respectively of Electricity, Galvanism and Magnetism.
References.—With regard to the perpetual electrophorus, see L. S. Jacquet de Malzet “Lettre d’un Abbé de Vienne ...” Vienna, 1775, translated into German by “A. H.” (A. Hildebrand), Wien, 1776; also C. Cuyper’s “Exposé d’une méthode ...” La Haye, 1778; and, for other improvements, Marsiglio Landriani, Scelta d’Opuscoli, 12mo, XIX. p. 73; J. F. Klinkosch, Mém. de l’Acad. de Prague, III. p. 218. Consult J. C. Poggendorff, “Biog.-Litter. Hand. ...” Vol. I. pp. 1, 182, and Larousse, “Dictionnaire Universel,” Vol. IX. p. 868.
A.D. 1804.—Hatchett (Charles), F.R.S. and foreign member of the Paris Academy, communicates through a paper entitled “An Analysis of the Magnetical Pyrites ...” his conclusions that iron must be combined with a large portion of either carbon, phosphorus or sulphur in order to acquire the property of receiving permanent magnetic virtue, there being, however, a limit beyond which an excess of either of the above-named substances renders the compound wholly incapable of exhibiting the magnetic energy. In this connection, the interesting observations of Messrs. Seebeck, Chenevix and Dr. Matt. Young on anti-magnetic bodies, in Vol. XIV. p. 27, of the eighth “Encyclopædia Britannica,” will repay perusal.
Three years before, on the 26th of November 1801, Mr. Hatchett had communicated to the Royal Society an interesting paper on columbium, a new metallic substance found in an ore from the State of Massachusetts.
References.—“Abstracts of the papers ... of the Phil. Trans.,” Vol. I. p. 155; also the Phil. Trans. for 1804, p. 315; Phil. Mag., Vol. XXI. pp. 133 and 213; Poggendorff, Vol. I. p. 1031; “Cat. Sc. Papers Roy. Soc.,” Vol. I. p. 155.
A.D. 1804.—M. Dyckhoff publishes in Nicholson’s Journal, Vol. VII. pp. 303 and 305, “Experiments on the activity of a galvanic pile in which thin strata of air are substituted instead of the wet bodies.” His description of what has by many been called the first practical dry pile is as follows:
“I constructed a pile with discs of copper and zinc, and little bits of thin green glass about the size of a lentil, three of which I placed triangularly in the intervals that separated the metallic plates. Thus between each pair of metals I had a thin stratum of air instead of a wet substance. A pile of ten pairs tried by the condenser affected the electrometer as powerfully as a common (voltaic) pile of five pairs.”