The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein, 1836-1862 : with notes, comments and references to contemporary letters / edited by Georg W.A. Kahlbaum and Francis V. Darbishire.
- Date:
- 1899
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein, 1836-1862 : with notes, comments and references to contemporary letters / edited by Georg W.A. Kahlbaum and Francis V. Darbishire. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
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![Schcenbciii to Faraday} Sir, As our continental and particularly German perio- dicals are rather slow in publishing scientific papers, and as I am anxious to make you as soon as possible acquainted with some new electro-chemical phaenomena lately observed by me, I take the liberty to state them to you by writing. Being tempted to do so on]_y by scientific motives, I entertain the flattering hope, that the contents of my letter will be received by you with kindness. 'Jlie facts, I am about laying before you seem to me not only to be new, but at the same time deserving the attention of chemical philosophers. Les voici.'^ If one of the ends of an iron wire be made red hot, and after cooling be immersed in nitric acid, spec.gr. 1.35, neither the end in question nor any other part of the wire will be affected, whilst the acid of the said strength is well known to act rather violently upon common iron. To see how far the influence of the oxidized end of the wire goes, I took an iron wire of 50' in length and o'.5 in thickness, heated one of its ends about 3 in length, immersed it in the acid of the strength above mentioned, and afterwards put the other end into the same fluid. No action of the acid upon the iron took place. ' This letter is published in the Phil. Mag. S. 3. vol. 9. 1836. p. 53 under the following title: On a peculiar voltaic condition of Iron, by Professor Schrenbein, of Bale. It is, although the original is not in our possession, reprinted here for the sake of completeness. - Schrenbein also describes these results in his first letter to Berzelius, dated April 22, 1836. Kahlbaum Briefwechsel Berzelius-Schcenbein, Basel. 1898. p. 13. A](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2192899x_0023.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
