Robert Hare's Theory of Galvanism: A Study of Heat and Electricity in Early Nineteenth-Century American Chemistry

Abstract

As a professor of chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania, Robert Hare actively shaped early American science. He participated in a large network of scholars, including Joseph Henry, François Arago, and Jacob Berzelius, and experimented with and wrote extensively about electricity and its associated chemical and thermal phenomena. In the early nineteenth century, prominent chemists such as Berzelius and Humphry Davy proclaimed that a revolution had occurred in chemistry through electrical research. Examining Robert Hare’s contributions to this discourse, this paper analyzes how Hare’s study of electricity and the caloric theory of heat led him to propose a new theory of galvanism. It also examines the reception of Hare’s work in America and Great Britain, highlighting the contributions of early American chemists to the development of electrochemistry.

Acknowledgements

Early research on this project was kindly supported by the Science History Institute in Philadelphia, PA, the Dibner Program in the History of Science at the Huntington Library in San Marino, CA, and the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, WA. I am grateful to the staff at these institutions as well as at the John Rylands Library in Manchester, UK, for their assistance in navigating their archives and special collections. I would also like to sincerely thank Alan Rocke and the two anonymous referees for their careful reading of and thoughtful suggestions on my paper.

Notes on contributor

Amy A. Fisher is an Assistant Professor in the Science, Technology, and Society Program at the University of Puget Sound. Her research focuses on the history and philosophy of the physical sciences in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Address: University of Puget Sound, 1500N. Warner Street, CMB 1061, Tacoma, WA, 98416. Email: [email protected].

Notes

1 Humphry Davy, “On the Electrical Phenomena Exhibited in Vacuo,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 112 (1822): 64–75, on 64.

2 David Cahan, “The Awarding of the Copley Medal and the ‘Discovery’ of the Law of Conservation of Energy: Joule, Mayer and Helmholtz Revisited,” Notes & Records of the Royal Society 66 (2012): 125–39.

3 See, for example, James Joule, “On the Heat evolved from Metallic Conductors of Electricity, and in the Cells of a Battery during Electrolysis,” London, Edinburgh and Dublin Philosophical Magazine 19 (October 1841): 260–77, rpt. in Scientific Papers of James Prescott Joule, vol. 1 (London: Physical Society, 1884), 60–81; Crosbie Smith, The Science of Energy: A Cultural History of Energy Physics in Victorian Britain (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 53–75; and William H. Cropper, “James Joule’s Work in Electrochemistry and the Emergence of the First Law of Thermodynamics,” Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 19 (1988): 1–15.

4 J.P. Joule manuscripts, JPJ/5 John Rylands University Library, The University of Manchester. This particular notebook contains an index of scientific papers and a personal dictionary of works related to key scientific terms. The dates for this notebook are unclear, but in it Joule cited papers by Michael Faraday, Jacob Berzelius, Edmond Becquerel, Julius Robert Mayer, Carlo Matteucci, and Robert Hare, amongst others, and included entries on chemical action, “frog” (animal electricity), heat, and electricity.

5 For more information on Hare’s life and science, see Edgar Fahs Smith, The Life of Robert Hare, an American Chemist (1781–1858) (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1917); George Kauffman, “Robert Hare (1781–1858): An Early American Scientist and Inventor on the 225th Anniversary of His Birth,” Chemical Educator 11 (2006): 206–12; and Martin D. Saltzman, “The Hare–Clarke Controversy Over the Invention of the Improved Gas Blowpipe,” Bulletin for the History of Chemistry 26 (2001): 106–11.

6 When Hare retired in 1847, Joseph Henry persuaded him to donate his papers and scientific apparatus to the fledgling Smithsonian Institution. Unfortunately, the Hare Collection was destroyed in a fire at the museum in 1865: Smith, Life of Robert Hare, 214–16. Some extant correspondence and manuscripts are, however, held in the Robert Hare Papers, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia. Additionally, the Othmer Library of Chemical History at the Science History Institute, also in Philadelphia, holds a small collection of some of Hare’s rarer print publications, such as Robert Hare, An Effort to Refute the Arguments Advanced in favour of the Existence in the Amphide Salts, of Radicals: Consisting, like Cyanogen, of More Than One Element (Philadelphia: John C. Clark, 1842).

7 Robert Hare, Memoir on the Supply and Application of the Blow-Pipe: Containing an Account of a New Method of Supplying the Blow-Pipe either with Common Air, or Oxygen Gas, and Also of the Effects of the Intense Heat Produced by the Combustion of the Hydrogen and Oxygen Gases (Philadelphia: Chemical Society, 1802); Robert Hare, A New Theory of Galvanism: Supported by Some Experiments and Observations Made by Means of the Calorimotor, a New Galvanic Instrument (Philadelphia: M. Carey and Son, 1819); and Robert Hare and Benjamin Silliman, “Correspondence Between Robert Hare …  and the Editor, on the Subject of Dr. Hare’s Calorimotor and Deflagrator, and the Phenomena Produced by Them,” American Journal of Science 5 (1822): 94–112.

8 Benjamin Silliman, “On the Compound Blowpipe: Extract from the Journal de Physique, of Paris, for January 1818,” American Journal of Science 1 (1819): 97–101, on 99, accessed at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/52663/52663-h/52663-h.htm#N1-Art_XXIV.

9 Saltzman, “Hare–Clarke Controversy,” and Brian P. Dolan, “Blowpipes and Batteries: Humphry Davy, Edward Daniel Clarke, and Experimental Chemistry in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain,” Ambix 45 (1998): 137–62.

10 Joule, “Heat Evolved from Metallic Conductors,” 60.

11 See, for example, Hasok Chang, “We Have Never Been Whiggish (About Phlogiston),” Centaurus 51 (2009): 239–64; Angela Bandinelli, “The Isolated System of Quantifiable Experiences in the 1783 ‘Mémoire Sur La Chaleur’ of Lavoisier and Laplace,” Ambix 54 (2007): 274–84; Arthur Donovan, Antoine Lavoisier: Science, Administration, and Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1993), 152–87; and Robert J. Morris, “Lavoisier and the Caloric Theory,” British Journal for the History of Science 6 (1972): 1–38. Most studies of caloric in the early nineteenth century focus on Carnot’s contributions to the study of heat or the relationship between heat and light. See, for example, Raffaele Pisano, “On Principles in Sadi Carnot’s Thermodynamics (1824): Epistemological Reflections,” Almagest 1 (2010): 128–79, and Theresa Levitt, “Editing out Caloric: Fresnel, Arago and the Meaning of Light,” British Journal for the History of Science 33 (2000): 49–65.

12 Marco Beretta, “From Nollet to Volta: Lavoisier and Electricity,” Revue d’histoire des sciences 54 (2001): 29–52; and Amy A. Fisher, “An Arc Across Fields of Study: Electricity in Physics and Chemistry (1751–1807),” PhD Diss., University of Minnesota, 2010.

13 Joule’s papers frequently made reference to caloric in the 1840s. See, for example, Joule, “Heat Evolved by Metallic Conductors”; “On the Calorific Effects of Magneto-Electricity, and on the Mechanical Value of Heat,” Philosophical Magazine 23 (October 1843): 263–76, 347–55, and 435–43; “On the Changes in Temperature Produced by the Rarefaction and Condensation of Air,” London, Edinburgh and Dublin Philosophical Magazine 26 (May 1845): 369–83; and “On the Heat Evolved during the Electrolysis of Water,” Memoirs of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society 7 (1846): 87–112.

14 See, for example, James Delbourgo, A Most Amazing Scene of Wonders: Electricity and Enlightenment in Early America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006); the classic and still relevant I. Bernard Cohen, Franklin and Newton: An Inquiry into Speculative Newtonian Experimental Science and Franklin’s Work in Electricity as an Example Thereof (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1956); and Albert Moyer, Joseph Henry: The Rise of an American Scientist (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997).

15 John W. Servos, “History of Chemistry,” Osiris 1 (1985): 132–46, on 132.

16 See, for example, Christopher Cumo, “The Rise of Publicly Funded Agricultural Experimentation in Ohio (1864–1882),” Historian 60 (1998): 543–60; George Webb, “The Chemist as Consultant in Gilded Age America: Benjamin Silliman, Jr. and Western Mining,” Bulletin for the History of Chemistry 15/16 (1994): 9–14; and Susan Lindee, “The American Career of Jane Marcet’s Conversations on Chemistry, 1806–1853,” Isis 82 (1992): 8–23.

17 On American chemistry in the mid-nineteenth century, see Daniels, “Process of Professionalization in American Science”; Martin D. Saltzman, “Benjamin Silliman Jr.’s 1874 Papers: American Contributions to Chemistry,” Bulletin for the History of Chemistry 36 (2011), 22–34; and Kristen A. Yarmey, “Communicating the Value of Chemistry: Evan Pugh, Penn State, and Public Confidence at the Time of the Land Grant,” Bulletin for the History of Chemistry 38 (2013): 86–96. On American chemistry in the late nineteenth century, see John W. Servos, Physical Chemistry from Ostwald to Pauling: The Making of a Science in America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), and John T. Stock, Ostwald’s American Students: Apparatus, Techniques and Careers (Concord, NH: Plaidswede, 2003).

18 See, for example, Benjamin Silliman, American Contributions to Chemistry: An Address delivered on the Occasion of the Celebration of the Centennial of Chemistry, at Northumberland, PA., August 1, 1874 (Philadelphia: Collins, 1874), 3; Daniels, “Process of Professionalization in American Science.”

19 Towards the end of his life, Hare became a controversial figure because of his conversion from Christianity to Spiritualism in the 1850s. As Timothy W. Kneeland notes, Hare’s colleagues “rejected, scorned, or pitied him” by the mid-nineteenth century because of his outspoken advocacy for Spiritualist principles, such as the belief in an eternal soul that could continue to learn and communicate with the living after death; see Kneeland, “Robert Hare: Politics, Science, and Spiritualism in the Early Republic,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 132 (2008): 245–60. Hare’s experiences differed from later nineteenth-century European scholars, such as William Crookes and Oliver Lodge, who became Spiritualists in the 1870s and 1880s, respectively. Although many of Crookes’s and Lodge’s colleagues expressed skepticism about their Spiritualist beliefs, they did not encounter the same degree of hostility as Hare, who joined the movement in its nascent stages in America. On Spiritualism, see Sarah Willburn and Tatiana Kontou, ed., The Ashgate Research Companion to Nineteenth-Century Spiritualism and the Occult (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012).

20 See, for example, Robert Hare, A Compendium of the Course of Chemical Instruction in the Medical Department of the University of Pennsylvania, Vol. 1 (Philadelphia: J. G. Auner, 1828), iii–v.

21 See, for example, Robert Hare and Jacob Berzelius, “On Certain Points of Chemical Philosophy and Nomenclature; By Robert Hare, M.D., Professor of Chemistry in the University of Pennsylvania; with a Letter from M. Berzelius,” Philosophical Magazine 66 (August, 1837): 176–88.

22 On the history of brewing and brewing families, see James Sumner, Brewing Science, Technology and Print, 1700–1880 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2013).

23 Edgar Fahs Smith, James Woodhouse: A Pioneer in Chemistry, 1770–1809 (Philadelphia: John C. Winston Company, 1918), 10, 117–46.

24 For an overview of the phlogistic–antiphlogistic debate, see, for example, Hasok Chang, Is Water H₂O? Evidence, Realism and Pluralism (New York: Springer, 2012), and Frederic L. Holmes, “The Revolution in Chemistry and Physics: Overthrow of a Reigning Paradigm, or Competition Between Contemporary Research Programs,” Isis 91 (2000): 735–53.

25 Smith, James Woodhouse, 38–47. See also John Beer, “The Chemistry of the Founding Fathers,” Journal of Chemical Education 53 (1976): 405–8.

26 Smith, James Woodhouse, 38–41.

27 Smith, James Woodhouse, 40.

28 Smith, Life of Robert Hare, 11–12.

29 Smith, Life of Robert Hare, 53–64.

30 Hare, quoted without reference or precise date in Smith, Life of Robert Hare, 32. On the founding of the American Journal of Science, see Simon Baatz, “‘Squinting at Silliman’: Scientific Periodicals in the Early American Republic, 1810–1833,” Isis 82 (1991): 223–44.

31 On Davy’s early experiments, see June Fullmer, Young Humphry Davy: The Making of an Experimental Chemist (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2000). See also Jan Golinski, The Experimental Self: Humphry Davy and the Making of a Man of Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016).

32 Humphry Davy, “The Bakerian Lecture: On Some Chemical Agencies of Electricity,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 97 (1807): 1–56.

33 Humphry Davy, Elements of Chemical Philosophy (London: J. Johnson and Co., 1812), 81. Berzelius provided a concise list of electronegative and electropositive materials: Essai sur la théorie des proportions chimiques et sur l’influence chimique de l’électricité (Paris: Méquignon-Marvis, 1819), 77–9; and Evan Melhado, Jacob Berzelius, the Emergence of His Chemical System (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1981).

34 Berzelius, Essai sur la théorie des proportions chimiques, 92.

35 Jacob Berzelius, An Attempt to Establish a Pure Scientific System of Mineralogy, by the Application of the Electro-Chemical Theory and the Chemical Proportions, trans. John Black (London: R. Baldwin and W. Blackwood, 1814), 11.

36 Helge Kragh, “Volta’s Apostle: Christoph Heinrich Pfaff, Champion of the Contact Theory,” Nuova Voltiana 5 (2003): 69–82. Hare also cited Volta’s theory; see Hare, New Theory of Galvanism, 8; also Giuliano Pancaldi, Volta: Science and Culture in the Age of Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 240–50.

37 Humphry Davy, “Notice of Some Observations on the Causes of Galvanic Phenomena, and on Certain modes of Increasing the Powers of the Galvanic Pile,” Journal of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, and the Arts [hereafter cited as JNPCA] 4 (November 1800): 337–42, rpt. in The Collected Works of Sir Humphry Davy, ed. John Davy, Vol. 2 [hereafter cited as Davy Collected Works] (London: Smith, Elder, and Co., 1839), 155–63, on 163.

38 In a series of papers published in 1800 in JNPCA (or Nicholson’s Journal, as it was commonly known), Davy investigated how piles made of different materials compared. See Davy, “An Account of Some Experiments made with the Galvanic Apparatus of Signor Volta,” JNPCA 4 (September 1800): 275–81, rpt. in Davy Collected Works, 139–50; “Additional Experiments on Galvanic Electricity, in a Letter to Mr. Nicholson,” JNPCA 4 (October 1800): 326–28, rpt. in Davy Collected Works, 150–55; “An Account of Some Additional Experiments and Observations on the Galvanic Phænomena,” JNPCA 4 (December 1800): 394–402, rpt. in Davy Collected Works, 166–80; and “An Account of a Method of Constructing Simple and Compound Galvanic Combinations with the Use of Metallic Substances, by Means of Charcoal and Different Fluids,” Journal of the Royal Institution of Great Britain 4–5 (January 1802): 79–80, rpt. in Davy Collected Works, 209–10.

39 See Lance Day and Ian McNeil, ed., “William Cruickshank,” in Biographical Dictionary of the History of Technology (New York: Routledge, 1996), 316, and Melvyn Usselman, Pure Intelligence: The Life of William Hyde Wollaston (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015).

40 William Cruickshank, “Some Experiments and Observations on Galvanic Electricity,” JNPCA 3 (1800): 187–91; and Cruickshank, “Additional Remarks on Galvanic Electricity,” JNPCA 3 (1800): 254–64.

41 William Hyde Wollaston, “Experiments on the Chemical Production and Agency of Electricity,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 91 (1801): 427–34.

42 Hare, New Theory of Galvanism, 3.

43 Humphry Davy, “On Some Chemical Agencies of Electricity,” 47–8.

44 Humphry Davy, “On the Power and Properties of Matter, and the General Laws of Chemical Changes,” in Elements of Chemical Philosophy (Philadelphia: Bradford and Inskeep, 1812), rpt. in Davy Collected Works, Vol. 4, 43–140, on 99–100. See also Alessandro Volta, “Del modo di render sensibilissima la più debole elettricità sia naturale, sia artificiale,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 72 (1782): 237–80, vii–xxxiii.

45 Davy, “On the Power and Properties of Matter,” 100.

46 Hare, New Theory of Galvanism, 5–6.

47 Antoine Lavoisier, Elements of Chemistry, in a New Systematic Order, Containing All the Modern Discoveries (1789), accessed at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30775/30775-h/30775-h.htm, 1–25.

48 Lavoisier noted in 1785 that,

[i]f [two substances] be both concrete, as for example, lead and tin, they have no action upon each other, because the attraction of their respective parts amongst themselves is stronger than the mutual action which the molecules of the two metals can exercise upon each other; so that it becomes a chemical axiom corpora non agunt nisi sint soluta [bodies do not react unless fluid]: but when by a stronger action of heat the molecules of one of the two metals have separated; where their attraction or affinity of aggregation has been diminished, then they act on each other, and combination takes place between the metals. (see Lavoisier, quoted in Richard Kirwan, An Essay on Phlogiston and the Constitution of Acids, trans. William Nicholson, (London: J. Johnson, 1789), on 47)

Although Davy asserted that heat was an effect of matter in motion, he made a similar claim about the importance of heating to chemical change. See Humphry Davy, “Essay on Heat, Light, and the Combinations of Light, with a New Theory of Respiration,” in Contributions to Physical and Medical Knowledge, ed. Thomas Beddoes (Bristol: Biggs and Cottle, 1799), rpt. in Davy Collected Works, Vol. 2, 3–88, on 9–23, especially 15–17; as well as Benjamin Thompson (Count Rumford), “An Inquiry Concerning the Source of Heat Which Is Excited by Friction,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 88 (1798): 80–102. Davy’s position created controversy in England; see Golinski, The Experimental Self, 117–24.

49 Davy, “On the Power and Properties of Matter,” 100; and Hare, New Theory of Galvanism, 9.

50 Davy, “On the Power and Properties of Matter,” 65.

51 Hare, New Theory of Galvanism, 4.

52 Hare, New Theory of Galvanism, 4–5. Hare was apparently unfamiliar with Benjamin Franklin’s work on this subject. Franklin argued that electricity could cause the vaporization of solids and liquids. See Benjamin Franklin, Experiments and Observations on Electricity, Made at Philadelphia in America (London: E. Cave, 1751), 39.

53 Hare, New Theory of Galvanism, 5.

54 Antoine Lavoisier and Pierre-Simon Laplace, Memoir on Heat, Read to the Royal Academy of Sciences, June 28, 1783, trans. Henry Guerlac (New York: Neale Watson Academic Publications, 1982).

55 Lissa Roberts, “A Word and the World: The Significance of Naming the Calorimeter,” Isis 82 (1991): 198–222, on 221; and Bandinelli, “Isolated System.” Kneeland also made this connection between Hare’s instrumentation and Lavoisier’s apparatus; see Kneeland, “Robert Hare,” 251, n. 24.

56 Cruickshank, “Additional Remarks,” 258–59.

57 Nicholson and Carlisle, in contrast, used half crowns in their first pile, setting the diameter at roughly 1.3 inches.

58 Hare, New Theory of Galvanism, 7.

59 Hare, New Theory of Galvanism, 8.

60 Hare noted that the current was so weak that it could not be used to electrically decompose substances. The current did, however, produce a slight acidic taste in the mouth. Hare, New Theory of Galvanism, 8.

61 Hare, New Theory of Galvanism, 12–14.

62 Hare, New Theory of Galvanism, 13–14.

63 Lavoisier, Elements of Chemistry, 50–4.

64 Hare, New Theory of Galvanism, 14.

65 Hare, New Theory of Galvanism, 5.

66 In subsequent work, I plan to discuss Hare’s post-1825 research in more detail and to consider more broadly the reception of his theory in France, Germany, and Sweden.

67 Robert Hare, “A New Theory of Galvanism, Supported by Some Experiments and Observations Made by Means of the Calorimotor, a New Galvanic Instrument,” American Journal of Science, 1 (1819): 413–23; and Hare, New Theory of Galvanism (the pamphlet cited above in note 7).

68 Anonymous, “Hare’s Galvanic Instrument Called a Calorimotor,” Edinburgh Philosophical Journal 1 (August 1819): 414.

69 Robert Hare, “A New Theory of Galvanism, Supported by Some Experiments and Observations Made by Means of the Calorimotor, a New Galvanic Instrument,” Annals of Philosophy 14 (September 1819): 176–84; and Robert Hare, “A New Theory of Galvanism, Supported by Some Experiments and Observations made by Means of the Calorimotor, a New Galvanic Instrument,” Philosophical Magazine 54 (September 1819): 206–15.

70 William Henry, The Elements of Experimental Chemistry, 1st American ed. from the 8th London ed. (Philadelphia: R. Desilver, 1819).

71 This work also included an excerpt from Jean-Baptiste Biot’s Précis élémentaire de physique. References to Hare’s instrument may be found in John Farrar and Jean-Baptiste Biot, Elements of Electricity, Magnetism, and Electro-magnetism, Embracing the Late Discoveries and Improvements (Cambridge MA: University Press, 1826), 372–74.

72 Michael Faraday, Chemical Manipulation; Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, on the Methods of Performing Experiments of Demonstration or of Research, with Accuracy and Success (London: W. Phillips, 1827), 458. Faraday also referred to Hare’s instrument in his correspondence. See, for example, Michael Faraday to André-Marie Ampère, February 2, 1821, in The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, Vol. 1: 1811–1831, ed. Frank James (London: The Institution of Engineering and Technology, 1991), 251–53.

73 Thomas Thomson, An Outline of the Sciences of Heat and Electricity (London: Baldwin & Cradock, 1830), 515–24.

74 See, for example, Robert Hare, “A Memoir on Some New Modifications of Galvanic Apparatus, with Observations in Support of His Theory of Galvanism,” Annals of Philosophy 1 (May 1821): 329–40.

75 Andrew Ure, William Nicholson, Robert Hare, and Franklin Bache, A Dictionary of Chemistry, on the Basis of Mr. Nicholson’s: In Which the Principles of the Science Are Investigated Anew, and Its Applications to the Phenomena of Nature, Medicine, Mineralogy, Agriculture, and Manufactures, Detailed (Philadelphia: R. Desilver, 1821), s.v. “Electricity,” 3.

76 Pancaldi, Volta, 126.

77 Pancaldi, Volta, 88.

78 Ure et al., Dictionary of Chemistry, s.v. “Electricity,” 17.

79 See, for example, Mrs Lincoln Phelps, Chemistry for Beginners: Designed for Common Schools, and the Younger Pupils of Higher Schools and Academies (New York: Huntington and Savage, 1846), 76.

80 Benjamin Silliman, Elements of Chemistry, in the Order of the Lectures Given in Yale College, vol. 2 (New Haven, CT: H. Howe, 1830–1831), 649–54; 668–74; Thomas P. Jones and Jane Marcet, New Conversations on Chemistry …  On the Foundations of Mrs. Marcet’s “Conversations on Chemistry” (Philadelphia: John Grigg, 1834), 103–4, 190; Daniel B. Smith, Principles of Chemistry: Prepared for the Use of Schools, Academies, and Colleges (Philadelphia: U. Hunt, 1842), 67–8. Jones was a physician, superintendent of the U.S. Patent Office, and editor of the Franklin Journal; see Francis S. Drake, “Francis P. Jones,” Dictionary of American Biography (Boston: Houghton, Osgood & Company, 1879), 497. Smith was “founder of the first college of pharmacy in the United States, the first American pharmacy journal, and the first national professional association”; see Dennis B. Worthen, “Daniel B. Smith 1792–1883: Patriarch of American Pharmacy,” Journal of the American Pharmacists Association 48 (2008): 808–12, on 808.

81 See, for example, Edward Turner and Franklin Bache, Elements of Chemistry: Including the Recent Discoveries and Doctrines of the Science, 3rd American ed. from the 2nd London ed. (Philadelphia: John Grigg, 1830), 86–7, and Edward Turner, Justus Liebig, and William Gregory, Elements of Chemistry, Including the Actual State and Prevalent Doctrines of the Science, 7th ed. (London: Taylor and Walton, 1841), 98.

82 William D. Williams, “A Letter from Franklin Bache to Robert Hare,” Bulletin of the History of Chemistry 15 (1994): 27–29. See also Edgar Fahs Smith, Franklin Bache, Chemist (Philadelphia: [publisher not identified], 1922).

83 Franklin Bache, A System of Chemistry for the Use of Students of Medicine (Philadelphia: William Fry, 1819).

84 Williams, “Letter from Franklin Bache,” 27. See also Robert Hare and Franklin Bache, A Compendium of the Course of Chemical Instruction in the Medical Department of the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, J.G. Auner, 1836).

85 Bache, quoted in Turner and Bache, Elements of Chemistry, 86.

86 For more information about Thomson and the teaching of chemistry in Scotland, see Robert Anderson, “Chemistry Beyond the Academy: Diversity in Scotland in the Early Nineteenth Century,” Ambix 57 (2010): 84–103.

87 Thomson, Outline of the Sciences, 523.

88 Volta, “Del modo.” Volta introduced the term capacity to refer to the amount of electricity a substance was capable of absorbing. Through the systematic study of combinations of electrified plates, he determined that capacity depended upon material composition, shape, the distance between charged objects, and most importantly, their available surface area, meaning “surfaces which are free, or uninfluenced by an homologous [electrical] atmosphere” (xxi). He also showed that capacity was inversely proportional to electrical strength or intensity, which he defined as “the endeavour by which the electricity of an electrified body tends to escape from all the parts of it, to which tendency … especially the degree of elevation of an electrometer correspond[s]” (xiv–xx). See also Pancaldi, Volta, 112–21 and 125–45; and John Heilbron, Electricity in the 17th and 18th Centuries: A Study of Early Modern Physics (Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 1979), 449–89. Thomson employed a similar definition in his work; see Thomson, Outline of the Sciences, 515–24.

89 Thomson, Outline of the Sciences, 517–18, quote on 517. For more on Gay-Lussac and Thenard’s experiments, see Geoffrey Sutton, “The Politics of Science in Early Napoleonic France: The Case of the Voltaic Pile,” Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 11 (1981): 329–66; and Maurice Crosland, Gay-Lussac, Scientist and Bourgeois (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978), esp. 72–80, 125–33.

90 Thomson, Outline of the Sciences, 519–22, on 519.

91 Thomson, Outline of the Sciences, 523.

92 Thomson, Outline of the Sciences, 519–22, on 519. Thomson suggested that electrical intensity:

depend[ed] upon the smallness of the distance at which the particles of electricity are placed from each other. The nearer these particles are to each other, the greater will be the repulsion which they will exercise upon each other, and the greater will be their attraction for the opposite electricity. (520)

93 Samuel L. Metcalfe, Caloric: On Its Mechanical, Chemical, and Vital Agencies in the Phenomena of Nature (London: William Pickering, 1843), 382–83. On Metcalfe, see Francis S. Drake, “Samuel L. Metcalfe,” Dictionary of American Biography (Boston: Houghton, Osgood & Company, 1879), 618. For a more detailed account of Metcalfe’s caloric theory, see Masao Watanabe, “The Caloric Theory of S. L. Metcalfe,” British Journal for the History of Science 17 (1984): 210–13.

94 Metcalfe, Caloric, 387.

95 Metcalfe, Caloric, 387–93.

96 Metcalfe, Caloric, 389.

97 Metcalfe, Caloric, 390.

98 Metcalfe, Caloric, 388. Metcalfe cited Isaac Newton to further support his argument: “Newton thought it ‘inconceivable that two œthers could be diffused through all nature, one of which acts upon the other, and by consequence is reacted upon, without retarding, shattering, dispersing, and confounding one another’s motion.’—(Optics, p. 339).”

99 Michael Faraday, “On some new Electromagnetical Motions, and on the Theory of Magnetism,” Quarterly Journal of Science 12 (1821): 74–96, rpt. in Michael Faraday, Experimental Researches on Electricity, vol. 2 (London: Richard and John Edward Taylor, 1844), 127–47. There is a large literature on Faraday. See, for example, L. Pearce Williams, Michael Faraday: A Biography (New York: Basic Books, 1965); G. N. Cantor, David Gooding, and Frank James, Michael Faraday (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1996); and Friedrich Steinle, Exploratory Experiments: Ampère, Faraday, and the Origins of Electrodynamics (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016).

100 Faraday, Experimental Researches, Vol. 2, 127.

101 Faraday, Experimental Researches, Vol. 2, 127–28.

102 Robert Hare, “A Letter to Prof. Faraday, on certain Theoretical Opinions,” American Journal of Science 38 (1840): 1–11, rpt. in Faraday, Experimental Researches, Vol. 2, 251–61. Faraday’s reply was also reprinted in Michael Faraday, “An Answer to Dr. Hare’s Letter on certain Theoretical Opinions (July 1840),” in Experimental Researches, Vol. 2, 262–74.

103 Hare writing to Faraday in Faraday, Experimental Researches, Vol. 2, 251–52.

104 Hare quoted in Faraday, Experimental Researches, Vol. 2, 258.

105 Hare quoted in Faraday, Experimental Researches, Vol. 2, 259–60, on 260.

106 Faraday to Hare in Faraday, Experimental Researches, Vol. 2, 262.

107 David Gooding, “Faraday, Thomson, and the Concept of the Magnetic Field,” British Journal for the History of Science 13 (1980): 91–120, on 95.

108 Gooding, “Faraday, Thomson,” 104.

109 Robert Hare, “Second Letter to Prof. Faraday, from Robert Hare, M.D., Professor of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania,” American Journal of Science 41 (1841): 1–14, on 6. Hare’s letter also appeared a few months later in Philosophical Magazine 13 (June 1841): 465–77. Interestingly, Metcalfe supported Hare. Metcalfe noted that there were inconsistencies in the way Faraday described electricity. He noted that:

at one time [Faraday] adopted the simple and rational theory of Franklin, that it is a material fluid, definite measures of which belong to each element of ponderable matter. And yet he speaks of it very often as if he considered it to be a compound fluid. But when treating of its chemical agency, he represents it as ‘a modification of the exertion of chemical forces’. (Caloric, viii)

This shows not only the complexity of the phenomena under consideration, but the challenges in reaching consensus about how to interpret and understand these effects.

110 Hare, “Second Letter to Prof. Faraday,” 6. On the same page, Hare also referred back to Lavoisier’s caloric theory of heat, stating that:

every metallic particle in any metallic mass must be surrounded by an atmosphere of caloric; since the changes of dimension consequent to variations of temperature, can only be explained by corresponding variations in the quantity of caloric imbibed, and in the consequent density of the calorific atmospheres existing in the mass which undergoes these changes.

111 Hare, “Second Letter to Prof. Faraday,” 10.