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

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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$of our experiments to vcr}' few ones and to execute them on a ver\' small scale. The results obtained from them were, how- ever, such as to convince us, that the peculiar condition cannot be excited either in Cobalt or in Nickel, at least not in the same wa}' as it is done in Iron. This fact seems to indicate, that the jicculiar voltaic state of the latter metal has nothing to do with its magnetic properties. The french papers have been talking for some time about a discovery (said to have been made by a certain Mr. Sorel ^ a Frenchman) which if it should turn out to be something more than a mere news-papers' invention, would be indeed a most wonderful thing. By dint of god knows what sort of suljstance, the news-papers call it \'oltaic-)30wder, Mr. Sorel is said to be able of changing Iron and any other readily oxidable metal such, as to give them (with regard to their chemical bearings to oxigen) the properties of the precious ones. Such a discovery, ot course, cannot be made in our days without being turned to practical advantage and so, indeed, the paj^ers tell us, that Mr. Sorel is going to enter into partnershi]3 with the well known Mr. Cockerill in order to make use of his discovery in the large establishments of the latter gentleman. By the manner in which some German papers took notice of the results of my late researches on the peculiar condition of Iron, I too have alread}^ ' In his pamphlet: Veihalteii des Eisens zum vSauerstoff. Basel 1837, which he dedicated to Faraday and which is dated June 4th 1837, Schoenbein on p. 90 says that by means of passivity iron should be convertible into precious metals. Since we failed to come across Sorels paper — it is not even mentioned in the Catalogue of the Royal Society — or to discover anything about his history, we are unable fully to appreciate Schcenbeins reasons for taking such a lively interest in Sorels results. ■ In a letter to Poggendorff Schojnbein however complains that on the continent so little attention is paid to his work on the passivity of iron. Poggendorff in his answer (Jan. 19th 183S) puts it down to the fact that such a subject is of too chemical a nature for philosophers, whereas chemists despise anything that requires more thought than is necessary to prepare and decompose chemical compounds.$