In one instance, while in Europe, in 1806, at a public lecture, I saw some of them exhibited by a celebrated Professor, who mentioned Mr. Hare as the reputed author of the invention.
In December, 1811, I instituted an extended course of experiments with Mr. Hare's blowpipe, in which I melted lime and magnesia, and a long list of the most refractory minerals, gems, and others, the greater part of which had never been melted before, and I supposed that I had decomposed lime, barytes, strontites, and magnesia, evolving their metallic basis, which burnt in the air as fast as produced. I communicated a detailed account of my experiments to the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, who published it in their Transactions for 1812; with their leave it was communicated to Dr Bruce's Mineralogical Journal, and it was printed in the 4th number of that work. Hundreds of my pupils can testify that Mr. Hare's splendid experiments, and many others performed with his blowpipe, fed by oxygen and hydrogen gases, have been for years past annually exhibited, in my public courses of chemistry in Yale College, and that the fusion and volatilization of platina, and the combustion of that metal, and of gold and silver, and of many other metals; that the fusion of the earths, of rock crystal, of gun flint, of the corundum gems, and many other, very refractory substances; and the production of light beyond the brightness of the sun, have been familiar experiments in my laboratory. I have uniformly given Mr. Hare the full credit of the invention, although my researches, with his instrument, had been pushed farther than his own, and a good many new results added.
It is therefore with no small surprise that, in the Annales de Chimie et de Physique, for September, 1816, I found a translation of a very elaborate memoir, from a Scientific Journal, published at the Royal Institution in London, in which a full account is given of a very interesting series of experiments performed by means of Mr. Hare's instrument; or rather one somewhat differently arranged, but depending on the same principle. Mr. Hare's invention is slightly mentioned in a note, but no mention is made of his experiments, or of mine.
On a comparison of the memoir in question with Mr. Hare's and with my own, I find that very many of the results are identical, and all the new ones are derived directly from Mr. Hare's invention, with the following differences.—In Mr. Hare's, the two gases were in distinct reservoirs, to prevent explosion; they were propelled by the pressure of a column of water, and were made to mingle, just before their exit, at a common orifice. In the English apparatus, the gases are both in one reservoir, and they are propelled by their own elasticity, after condensation, by a syringe.
Professor Clarke, of Cambridge University, the celebrated traveller, is the author of the memoir in question; and we must presume that he was ignorant of what had been done by Mr. Hare and myself, or he would candidly have adverted to the facts.
It is proper that the public should know that Mr. Hare was the author of the invention, by means of which, in Europe, they are now performing the most brilliant and beautiful experiments; and that there are very few of these results hitherto obtained there, by the use of it, (and the publication of which has there excited great interest,) which were not, several years ago, anticipated here, either by Mr. Hare or by myself.
As I have cited only printed documents, or the testimony of living witnesses, I trust the public will not consider this communication as indelicate, or arrogant, but simply a matter of justice to the interests of American science, and particularly to Mr. Hare.
BENJAMIN SILLIMAN,
Professor of Chemistry and Mineralogy in Yale College.