The discharge of electricity through gases : lectures delivered on the occasion of the sesquicentennial of Princeton University / by J.J. Thomson ; with diagrams.
- J. J. Thomson
- Date:
- 1898
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The discharge of electricity through gases : lectures delivered on the occasion of the sesquicentennial of Princeton University / by J.J. Thomson ; with diagrams. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.
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![a carbon cylinder was being burnt, the cylinder was negatively electrified, while there was positive elec- trification in the gas over the cylinder. Lavoisier and Laplace1 showed that the same effect takes place with glowing coal. Reiss2 proved that there was positive electricity in the air near a glowing platinum spiral. Pouillet3 found that when a jet of hydrogen was burnt in air there was negative electrification in the unburnt hydrogen in the jet. Another case of electrification produced in a gas by chemical action was discovered by Lavoisier and Laplace,4 who found that when hydrogen is rapidly liberated by the action of sulphuric acid on iron, a strong positive electrification comes off. This, with other cases of electrification by chemical action, was investigated by Mr. Enright.5 As a good deal of spray is produced by the bubbling of the hydrogen through the sulphuric acid, it has been suggested that the spray and not the gas may in this case be the carrier of the electrification. To test this point, Mr. Townsend recently made in the Cavendish Laboratory a series of experi- ments on the electrification produced when a gas is liberated by chemical action. He found that 1 Phil. Trans., 1782. 2 Reiss, Reibungselektricitat, vol. i. p. 267. 3 Pogg. Ann., ii. 426. 4 Memoires de l'Acad. des Sciences, 1782. 5 Phil. Mag. [5], 29, p. 56, 1890.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21080938_0026.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
