PICTET, RAOUL. (RAOUL-PIERRE).- THE PROCESS OF LIQUEFACTION OF OXYGEN AND NITROGEN INVENTED.

Mémoire sur la liquéfaction de L'Oxygène. La Liquéfaction et la solidification de L'Hydrogéne, et sur les Théories des Changements d'état des Corps.

Paris, G. Masson, 1878. 8vo. Contemp. hcalf, raised bands, gilt spine. Light wear along edges. Small stamps on verso of titlepage. In: "Annales de Chimie et de Physique", 5e Series - Tome 13. 576 pp. a. 2 large folded engraved plates. (Entire volume offered). Pictet's paper: pp. 145-228. 1 full-page illustration in woodcut of his apparatus.

First appearance of a milestone paper in chemistry - issued at the same time in Geneva - in which Pictet announced and described his invention of the liquefaction-process of oxygen and nitrogen - the first liquefaction of an atmospheric gas.

"It was Pictet's researches that led to a scientific achievement which at once made him internationally famous. In december of 1877, when Louis Paul Cailletet was about to report hisliquefaction of oxygen to the Paris Academy of Sciences, ictet cabled from Geneva that he hadachieved the same feat. Cailletet and Pictet had worked independently and by different methods. While Cailletet's method had been to compress, cool and expand the gas to be liquefied, Pictet had employed the "cascade" process, in which the refrigeration cycles of three different cooling media with successively lower critical temperatures were arranged in series, so that the gas liquefied in first would act as a cooolant in the liquefation of the next. ictet used sulphur dioxide in the first cycle, carbon dioxide in the second and oxygen in the last. Although Cailletet could establish a priority of a few weeks, Pictet has been allowed to share the credit for the first liquefaction of an atmospheric gas."(DSB X, pp. 604-5).

Order-nr.: 44229