Of the French Academy.
In the interval between 1602 and 1626 four philosophers were born who
seem to have been divinely appointed to teach men the mysteries of air.
These were a German, Otto von Guericke (1602); two Frenchmen, Mariotte
and Pascal (1620, 1623), and finally an Englishman, Boyle (1626). Pascal
conceived the idea that air being material must have weight like other
materials, and consequently that the earth must be pressed upon by its
atmospheric envelope, and he proved this by the celebrated experiment at
Puy de Dôme.
Soon after, Otto von Guericke, having invented the air pump, succeeded in
exhausting the air from a vessel and confirmed Pascal’s idea that air was
really heavy, while Mariotte and Boyle at the same time, each in his own
country, and by almost identical experiments, proved that air is elastic,
that its volume decreases by pressure, and generally in proportion to the
weight to which it is subjected. Mariotte modestly called this discovery
a rule of nature. We call it a physical law, and very suitably name it
in France “Mariotte’s Law,” and in England “Boyle’s Law.”
It seemed necessary for science to collect her thoughts after this great
achievement. She seemed to think there was nothing more to discover.
Boyle and Mariotte would have been very much astonished if some one had
told them that this air, whose properties they had been demonstrating,
could be reduced to a liquid like water, and even to a solid like snow.
Nearly two centuries passed before the world was prepared for this new
discovery. We ourselves were ignorant of it until the month of April,
1883, when the Academy of Sciences received from Cracow these two
dispatches:
“Oxygen completely liquefied; the liquid colorless as carbonic
acid.” (April 9th.)
“Nitrogen frozen, liquefied by expansion; the liquid colorless.”
(April 16th.)