Louis Paul Cailletet
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Louis Paul Cailletet
- Date of Birth: September 21, 1832
- Place of Birth: Chatillon-sur-Seine, France
- Date of Death: January 5, 1913
- Claim to Fame: the first to liquefy oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and air
Louis Paul Cailletet was a French physicist and inventor who in 1877-78 was the first to liquefy oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and air. He did it by cooling them below their critical temperatures, first compressing the gas, then cooling it, then allowing it to expand to cool it still further.
Educated in Paris, Cailletet returned to Chatillon to manage his father's ironworks. In an effort to determine the cause of accidents that occurred while tempering incompletely forged iron, Cailletet found that heating the iron put it in a highly unstable state, with gases dissolved in it. He then analyzed the gases from blast furnaces, which helped him understand the role of heat in the changes in the state of metals. This brought him to the work of liquefying the various gases.
Among his other achievements, Cailletet installed a 300-m/985-ft high manometer on the Eiffel Tower; conducted an investigation of air resistance on falling bodies; made a study of a liquid-oxygen breathing apparatus for high-altitude ascents; and developed numerous devices, including automatic cameras, an altimeter, and air-sample collectors for sounding-balloon studies of the upper atmosphere.
Last updated: November 17, 2004.
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Louis Paul Cailletet
French physicist (1832–1913)
Born in Chatillon-sur-Seine in France, the son of a metallurgist, Cailletet studied in Paris and then became a manager at his father's foundry.
He is most famous for his work on the liquefaction of gases. Cailletet realized that the failure of others to liquefy the permanent gases, even under enormous pressures, was explained by Thomas Andrews's concept of critical temperature. In 1877 he succeeded in producing liquid oxygen by allowing the cold, compressed gas to expand. This technique, depending on the effect discovered by Joule and Thomson, cooled the gas to below its critical temperature. In later experiments he liquefied nitrogen and air. Raoul Pictet, working independently, used a similar technique. In 1884 Cailletet was elected to the Paris Academy for his work. He is also the inventor of the altimeter and the high-pressure manometer.
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Louis Paul Cailletet
| Louis Paul Cailletet | |
|---|---|
 Louis Paul Cailletet |
|
| Born | 21 September 1832 Châtillon-sur-Seine, Côte-d'Or |
| Died | 5 January 1913 |
| Nationality | France |
| Fields | Physics |
| Known for | Liquefaction of gases |
Louis-Paul Cailletet (21 September 1832 – 5 January 1913) was a French physicist and inventor.
Life and work
Cailletet was born in Châtillon-sur-Seine, Côte-d'Or. Educated in Paris, Cailletet returned to Châtillon to manage his father's ironworks. In an effort to determine the cause of accidents that occurred while tempering incompletely forged iron, Cailletet found that heating the iron put it in a highly unstable state, with gases dissolved in it. He then analyzed the gases from blast furnaces, which helped him understand the role of heat in the changes of states (phases) of metals. This brought him to the work of liquefying the various gases.
Cailletet succeeded in producing droplets of liquid oxygen[1] in 1877 by a different method than Raoul Pictet: He used the Joule-Thomson effect; oxygen was cooled while highly compressed, then allowed to rapidly expand, cooling it further, resulting in the production of small droplets of liquid oxygen.[2]
Among his other achievements, Cailletet installed a 300-m/985-ft high manometer on the Eiffel Tower; conducted an investigation of air resistance on falling bodies; made a study of a liquid-oxygen breathing apparatus for high-altitude ascents; and developed numerous devices, including automatic cameras, an altimeter, and air-sample collectors for sounding-balloon studies of the upper atmosphere.
See also
References
- ^ Cailletet, L (July 1885). "The Liquefaction Of Oxygen". Science 6 (128): 51–52. Bibcode 1885Sci.....6...51C. doi:10.1126/science.ns-6.128.51. PMID 17806947.
- ^ For biographical and scientific details, see Sloan, T. O'Connor (1920). Liquid Air and the Liquefaction of Gases. New York: Norman W. Henley. pp. 173 – 202. http://books.google.com/?id=eLk3AAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Liquid+Air+and+the+Liquefaction+of+Gases.
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