“Engraving and Description of Voltaic Series combining the advantages of the trough of Cruickshank with those of the Deflagrator.” [Pp. 285–291 in:] The American Journal of Science and Arts, Vol. XXXII, No. 2—July, 1837, for April, May, and June, 1837.

Robert Hare on voltaic series and electrochemistry, 1837

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First American journal appearance of Robert Hare’s significant paper on voltaic battery construction, in which he combined the structural advantages of Cruickshank’s trough with his own deflagrator. Hare’s article placed his American research into direct conversation with Michael Faraday’s electrical investigations, addressing questions of current intensity, duration, and apparatus design. By proposing improved arrangements for galvanic pairs and acid distribution, Hare advanced both the efficiency and reproducibility of electrochemical experiments. His work is a notable contribution to early electrochemistry and a scarce instance of American innovation being recognized within the transatlantic development of electrical science in the 1830s.

Robert Hare (1781–1858), professor of chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania, was one of the foremost American chemists of the early nineteenth century. Best known for inventing the oxy-hydrogen blowpipe, he also made enduring contributions to electrical instrumentation and chemical education. His extensive writings in the American Journal of Science and Arts helped disseminate scientific methods and apparatus design at a time when American chemistry was still striving for international stature.

Very scarce in its original printed wrappers, with other important contributions including two additional articles by Hare: “Description of an Electrical Machine … and some Observations on the Causes of the Diversity in the Length of the Sparks erroneously distinguished by the terms Positive and Negative” (pp. 272–280), and “Of an Improved Barometer Gage Eudiometer” (pp. 280–285).

Also included: “Observations upon certain Atmospherical and Optical Phenomena” by Benjamin Silliman, “A Natural System of Botany” by John Lindley, “Description of the model of an Electro-Magnetic Engine” by John B. Zabriskie, “Notice of a New Mineral Species” by James Dwight Dana, “Remarks on the supposed connexion of the Gulf Stream with opposite currents” by Samuel Augustus Mitchell, “On the use of the Dynamic Multiplier” by James Dwight Dana, and “Description of the Skull of the Guadeloupe Fossil Man” by Louis Agassiz.

This copy kept by Charles Jones Wister (1782–1865), Philadelphia-born horticulturalist, friend to Thomas Nuttall, amateur scientist, and American Philosophical Society member.

Price: $350.00