"In this new department of physics, it is attempted not only to apply the blowpipe to a very great number of bodies, but so to modify the instrument or apparatus as to give it the highest degree of convenience, and especially to obviate the danger of explosion."
pp. 38 & 39.
REMARKS.
As the results produced by Mr. Hare's Compound Blowpipe, fed by oxygen and hydrogen gases, continue to be mentioned in Europe, in many of the Journals, without any reference to the results long since obtained in this country, we republish the following statement of facts, which was, in substance, first published in New-York, more than a year since. It should be observed, that Mr. Tilloch has since published, in the Philosophical Magazine in London, the memoir which contained the American results, and there have been some other allusions to it in different European Journals, and to Mr. Hare's previous experiments; but still this interesting class of results continue to be attributed to others than their original discoverers.
Yale College, April 7, 1817.
Various notices, more or less complete, chiefly copied from English newspapers, are now going the round of the public prints in this country, stating that "a new kind of fire" has been discovered in England, or, at least, new and heretofore unparalleled means of exciting heat, by which the gems, and all the most refractory substances in nature, are immediately melted, and even in various instances dissipated in vapour, or decomposed into their elements. The first glance at these statements, (which, as regards the effects, I have no doubt are substantially true,) was sufficient to satisfy me, that the basis of these discoveries was laid by an American discovery, made by Mr. Robert Hare of Philadelphia, in 1801. In December of that year, Mr. Hare communicated to the Chemical Society of Philadelphia his discovery of a method of burning oxygen and hydrogen gases in a united stream, so as to produce a very intense heat.
In 1802, he published a detailed memoir on the subject, with an engraving of his apparatus, and he recited the effects of his instrument; some of which, in the degree of heat produced, surpassed any thing before known.
In 1802, and 1803, I was occupied with him, in Philadelphia, in prosecuting similar experiments on a more extended scale; and a communication on the subject was made to the Philosophical Society of Philadelphia. The memoir is printed in their transactions; and Mr. Hare's original memoir was reprinted in the Annals of Chemistry, in Paris, and in the Philosophical Magazine, in London.
Mr. Murray, in his System of Chemistry, has mentioned Mr. Hare's results in the fusion of several of the earths, &c. and has given him credit for his discovery.