The New York herald., 1869-01-03
Another Triumph Against Nature in science.


At a meeting OF the Lyceum of Natural
History few evenings since Professor Joy,
of Columbia College, announced the probable
discovery of metallic hydrogen by Mr.. I. H.
Graham, of the Royal Society of London.
Hitherto hydrogen has been known only as a
gas, and known in that form only for about a
hundred years, and the knowledge of its impor-
tance as an elementary body is extended much
beyond the circles of merely scientific men.
The people know of it in the most contra
dictory relations--on the one hand as highly
infammable body in our common gas, and in
that terribly fierce bit of fire the oxy-hydrogen
blow pipe, and again, as the foe of all fire, when
united with oxygen it forms water. Strange
that water and the fiercest fire known should
be different combinations of the same ele-
ments. All the world, perhaps, knows that
this gas was formerly always used to elevate
balloons, because it was so much lighter than
the air; and the people who have worn that
lesson well into their brains will now, no
doubt, be rather puzzled by the science which
tells them that this body, lighter than the air,
has been followed through all its DISCUSSES,
shifts and refugees and caught at last in its
definite form as a metal, for by this name
they will compare it with iron or copper,
though they ought to class it with quick
silver. The interest of hydrogen in every
enlarged and philosophical study of chemistry
is at once seen in the consideration of it's
wonderful diffusion in nature, of its strangely
dissimilar relations to other bodies and of it's
potential character in all these relations.
Although only known as a gas, chemists
have long seen that the relations of this body
tended to place it among the metals. In order
to properly understand this people should
thoroughly get out of their heads the common
idea of metals based on the knowledge of iron
and lead, unless they will look particularly at
one point in regard to these metals. 1t is a
familiar fact, for instance, that iron and lead
are melted by very different degrees of heat.
Any common coal or wood fire will melt lead,
but not iron. In the same way other metals
are fluid at very different temperatures. One
metal is solid and hard at the temperature Of
the air, but is fluid at very high heat and
becomes vapor at still higher heat Another
metal, solid at the temperature of the air, but
not hard, becomes fluid under moderate heat,
~aA vaporizes also; while third metal is of
such nature that it is only SOLID at = tom
perature much lower than that Of the air, and
the temperature of the air may be regarded as
its melting point, slight additional heat being
sufficient to make the fluid vapor. Now, the
metallic hydrogen, or hydrogenium, must be
regarded as holding position on the same
line somewhat beyond this third metal-as q
metal whose character is such that at the tenn
perature or under conditions where some other
metals are solid and brittle, some merely
solid and some fluid, this is vaporized to an
intense degree.
Mr.. Graham was led to his discovery Of
hydrogenium by some observations of what is
called the ''occlusion" Of hydrogen gas, and
his first paper was read, we believe, before the
Royal Society in May, 1867, and subsequently
printed in the Philosophical Magazine.
Much earlier experiments made by Mr.. Grove
and by Professor Magnus, of Berlin (and
quoted by TyndaD, had shown what was called
the ''cooling property of hydrogen" With
platinum wire heated to a white heat the con-
tact of air only reduced the temperature to
red heat; but the contact Of hydrogen
quenched the wire altogether, and it required
five times the former heat to bring this wire
to white heat in hydrogen gas. The fact
there was that the hydrogen combined with
the metal and made new body, possessing
the distinguishing popularity that it bore a
very different relation from the pure metal to
given degrees of heat Mr.. Graham's expert
tion-of hydrogen gas by certain metals in GER
tain conditions are in the same direction
They show that metals may be saturated by
hydrogen, and that they thus undergo some
change seen in their different properties, and
they apparently prove that hydrogen is capable
of assuming some other than gaseous form
and of making alloys with known metals.
Every step like this in the progress Of scien-
tiiic discovery is important for the results it
promises practically in the chemistry of the
arts and philosophically and speculatively in
the chemistry Of nature and creation. Dis
covery is constantly revolutionizing the world
in all spheres, and discovery Of this sort,
like the discovery of the clue in q labyrinth,
may some day suddenly open mems eyes to
knowledge Of their real relation to many sur
rounding mysteries and wonders, and it is not
their least interest that they may yet help us
to some dim guess Of the steps by which the
great globe itself was condensed from chaotic
vapor. And then the question will be, where
did the vapor come from?
The Brooklyn Bridge.