Morning journal and courier., 1880-07-15

Detailed Account of MT. Hannay's
 IethOd-A Costly and Dangerous Exper-
 iment.
 From the London News.l
 It will be fresh in the memory of some Of our reader sthat few months ago statement was made to the effect that diamonds had been artifcially produced in Glasgow by a process not yet divulged and that, having been examined by the highest chemical and mineralogical authorities, the new gems hao been found to satisfy all the conditions hlth- erto alone supplied by the diamonds from nature's own laboratory. When, however, It became known that the new diamonds were almost microscopal, and that gem worth 5 shillings cost e5 to make, the interest In the subject somewhat diminished. It has, now ever, revived on the publication by Mr. It. b. Hannay, in the recently issued number or the Proceedings of the Royal Society, of the precise method by which he obtained his startling and novel results. And If only as a record of indomitable perseverance against ever increasing difficulties of scientific acu- men, and of the true application of the Bac- onian method of research, 1t is worthy of study. Some idea of the nature of the in vestigation may be obtained from the fact that out of 80 complex and expensive expert ments only succeeded. Violent explosions were frequent; furnaces were blown to pieces: steel tubes burst, scattering their fragments around. On other occasions, tubes which had been carefully prepared, filed welded, and nestled in a reverberatory furn- ace for many hours, were found to have leak ed and spoiled the experiment. "The con- tinuous strain on the nerves," writes Mir. aannay, watching the temperature of the furnace and in a state of tension in case of an explosion, induces nervous state which is extremely weakening, and when the explo- sion occurs it sometimes shakes one so severe ly that sickness supervenes.
 The diamond making experiments were started in September, 1879, when MT. Han nay made many attempts to find a solvent for the alkali metal, sodium, potassium, and lithium But in no instance could such sol vent be found which did not, in the gaseous state, and under pressure, unite with the al kali Even in the case of hydrocarbons, such as paraffine spirit containing only hydrogen and carbon, the alkai combined with the hy- drogen, setting free the carbon. Now, as we know, diamond is pure carbon; hence, when this element was set free from pure sub- stance, it was thought that conditions of pressure and temperature might eliminate it in the hard crystalline, adamantine form, viz, as diamond. Glass tubes were first en- ployed, but although of great thickness. in comparison with their bore, they were found to be insuficiently strong, and they were re- placed by wrought-iron tubes 20 inches long by 1 inch diameter, and having the diameter of the bore half an inch. In these ithium was heated for many hours to high tempe Iature in paraffne spirit, and on subsequent y opening the tube carbon in hard form was found within it. Great difficulty was ex- perienced in getting the tubes perfectly air tight, and eventually the open end was weld ed, at a white heat. And by that means alone did it resist leakage. Sometimes tubes would burst with an explosion like gun. A tube 20 inches long by 24 diameter and ] inch bore, was filled with hydrocarbon made from bone-oil, to which some charcoal pow der was added in order to keep an excess of carbon in the tube. Its open end was weld ed and it was heated for 14 hours with lithi- um. On opening it quantity of gas appear ed and some minute pieces of hard carbon which had evidently separated out from solu- tion Another similar tube burst at the end of eight hours heating A tube of cast-iron no less than 34 inches diameter, and with 8 bore of only of an inch, exploded at the end of an hour with fearful report, wrecking the furnace. Several tubes of steel also burst under the enormous pressure, at last shatter- ing the top of the furnace. The author remarks that in nature the temperature must atone time have been much higher than any thing we can now produce artifcially; while the pressnre obtained at depth of 200 miles below the earth's surface is greater than that which any of the materials from which we can form vessels can resist
 We come now to the great experiment which resulted in the artificial production of veritable diamonds A tube 20 inches long by inches diameter of coiled Lowmoor iron was bored so as to have an internal diameter of an inch. Thus the central bore was sur rounded by walls of iron, 14 inches thick, and, of course, capable of resisting an enor- nous pressure. In the tube was placed a mixture of 90 per cent. of bone-oil and 10 per cent. of parafine spirit, together with 4 grammes (about 62 grains) of the metal ithi- um. The open end of the tube was welded air-tight, and the whole was then heated to redness for 24 hours, and allowed to cool slowly On opening it a great volume of gas rushed from the tube, and within was found a hard, smooth mass adhering to the sides of the tube. t'It was quite black, and was re- moved with chisel, and as it appeared to be composed principally of iron and Gthium it was laid aside for analysis. I was pulverizing it in mortar when I felt that some parts of the material was extremely hard-not resist ing blow, but hard otherwise. On looking closer I saw that these were most transparent pieces imbedded in the hard matrix, and on triturating them I obtained some free from the black matter. They turned out to be crystalline carbon, exactly like a diamond. J Such is MT. Hannay's account of his discov- cry. Subsequent chemical and optical andy sis has proved that these hard, shining crys- tals are in every respect true diamonds. The cost is obviously great so, also, is the dan ger to life and property; and the great diff culties to be overcome render disappoint- ments common. What we now want is to get vessels of a material sufficiently strong and non-porous to resist the high pressures and temperatures upon which the success of the experiment depends. What we have learned, among other things, from the bril- liant researches of NM. Caillelet and Pictet, which led to the liquefaction of the so-calIed permanent gases, and from MT. Hannay's ex- periments described above, is that we must push the forces of nature to their utmost strain by using our most powerful mechani- cal devices for producing pressure, our strongest materials for resisting it, and our intensest means of producing both heat and cold.
 Emaciation, dropsy, mental and physical weakness arrested by Malt Bitters.