Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume IX.djvu/831

 KEROSENE 811 the results of his observations is a remarkable book, Die Seherin ton Prevorst (" The Seeress of Prevorst," Stuttgart, 1829), translated into English by Catharine Crowe, which produced an immense sensation. lie wrote a number of other books on the same subject. His novel Reiseschatten is considered his best work in Erose. Having been obliged in 1851 to resign is profession from a total loss of sight, he re- ceived a pension from the king of Wurtem- berg, and also one from the ex-king Louis I. of Bavaria. KEROSENE (from Gr. m/pdr, wax), a term originally employed as a trade mark for a mix- ture of certain liquid hydrocarbons used for purposes of illumination. It has been prepared from bituminous coal, bituminous shales, as- phaltums, malthas, wood, rosin, fish oil, and candle tar; but it is now almost exclusively obtained from petroleum. It is produced in greater or less quantity during the destructive distillation, at moderate temperatures, of nearly all organic and mineral substances containing carbon and hydrogen. It has been obtained for commercial purposes in enormous quanti- ties from the petroleum of Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Rangoon in India, the Caucasus, and other localities, and in less quantities from the cannel coals of England and the United States, the Boghead shale of Scotland, the al- bertite of New Brunswick, the asphaltum of Trinidad, and common rosin. It has been pre- pared in small quantities from the malthas of southern California, and from menhaden oil. For the details respecting its preparation from petroleum, see PETROLEUM PRODUCTS. Kero- sene consists of a mixture of many hydro- carbons, the whole having the consistence of the essential oils, a burning taste, and aro- matic odor. When properly prepared it is nearly colorless by transmitted light, but is slightly opalescent by reflected light. Its den- sity as compared with water should be about 810, or 43 of Baum6's hydrometer. When heated it should not yield inflammable vapors below 110 or 120 F., and should extinguish a lighted match as readily as water at the ordi- nary temperature of our apartments. As the temperature of this oil in a burning lamp sel- dom or never exceeds 100 F., it is obvious that such an oil is perfectly safe, as it would never yield any vapor below 110 which, by mingling with the air above the oil in the lamp, could form with it an explosive mix- ture. Chemically considered, kerosene is a mix- ture of the less- volatile members of the marsh gas series of the hydrides of the alcohol radi- cals (C n H 2n + 2), of a second homologous series isomeric with the first, having higher boiling points, together with members of the ethylene or olefiant gas series (C n H Jn ). The manufac- ture of this product as an article of commerce has developed into enormous proportions. Its unsurpassed qualities as an illuminating agent, together with its cheapness when compared with other substances used for that purpose, has caused it to penetrate to every' region whither its transportation is possible. Like many other of the great industries of the world, it has arisen from repeated and very small beginnings. The extraction of oil from bituminous substances, as shales, coals, asphal- tum, &c., is no new discovery. The first an- nouncement that oil might be thus procured is contained in the specification of a patent granted in England in 1694 to Martin Eele, Thomas Hancock, and William Portlock, for "a way to extract and make great quantities of pitch, tar, and oyle out of a sort of stone, of which there is a sufficient found within our dominions of England and Wales." The stone proved to be a bituminous shale ; but no prac- tical results appear to have followed the dis- covery and the patent. In 1716 the Messrs. Betton of Shrewsbury patented a process for extracting oil from the black, pitchy, flinty rock commonly found overlying the coal beds. This must have been the bituminous shales; and their method was to grind them to powder and subject the material to destructive distilla- tion. The product was used only as a medi- cine, and was noticed as such in 1761 in Lewis's " Materia Medica," under the name of British or petroleum oil, "extracted by distillation from a hard bitumen or a kind of stone coal found in Shropshire and other parts of Eng- land." The substance and the method of pro- curing it received occasional notice in the scien- tific journals; the earliest paper of much in- terest containing an account of Dr. Clayton's experiments was published in the " Philosophi- cal Transactions " of January, 1739. But it was about 90 years after this before any decided advance was made in adding to our knowledge of the products of the slow distillation of or- ganic bodies. Those products, however, were known only as oily fluids, possessing no in- terest except as empirical medicines, when Rei- chenbach of Moravia undertook to investigate their properties, and extended his researches to the great variety of products of the destructive distillation at both high and low temperatures of organic bodies, of animal as well as vegetable origin. The mixture of the several hydrocar- bons, such as constitute the purified coal oils, he called eupione (Gr. et>, very, and mav, fat). He recognized the superior illuminating quality of these oils, and observed that a cheap method of separating them from the tarry residues was alone required to bring them into extensive use for domestic purposes. The great number of new substances which he thus discovered, together with the promise that several among them might be applied to useful purposes, gave great interest to the accounts of his inves- tigations which appeared in the Journal fiir Chemie und Physik of Sehweigger-Seidel, the Neues JaJirlueh der Chemie und Physik, and Erdmann's Journal fur praktische Chemie, for 1830-'31. They attracted the attention of scientific and practical chemists in other parts of Europe, some of whom, in France particu-