"Priestley, and... Mr. [John] Warltire, had already experimented on this... with a detonating globe of the same kind as... Cavendish's Eudiometer. Their experiments were made partly in metallic, partly in glass vessels, and when employing the latter, they observed a deposition of moisture follow each explosion, but Priestley paid no attention to this... and Warltire referred it to the condensation of water which had been diffused in the state of vapour through the gases. ...Cavendish ...from the first appears to have anticipated that in the deposited water would be found the oxygen, which disappeared during the combustion of hydrogen in air, and the explanation of the diminution in volume which attended the vitiation of air."
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Footnote: The instrument which Volta introduced for firing explosive mixtures of gas, by means of the electric spark, and which still bears the name of Volta's Eudiometer, was a tube or cylinder open at one end. I do not know whether Volta ever employed a shut globe, but Priestley and Warltire certainly did before Cavendish, as he freely acknowledged, and they... as well as Watt, referred the device to Volta, so that it must be regretted that this apparatus has been called Cavendish's Eudiometer
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The Life of the Honble Henry Cavendish
The Life of the Honble Henry Cavendish Including Abstracts of His More Important Papers, and a Critical Inquiry into the Claims of all the Alleged Dicsoverers of the Composition of Water by George Wilson, M.D., F.R.D.E. Lecturer on Chemistry, Edinburgh, was published in 1851. It was written at the request of the Cavendish Society, and contains an authoritative biography of Henry Cavendish, a general sketch of his scientific researches and discoveries, as well as a discussion supporting Cavendish
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