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Ingenious means of applying this principle, in connection with the means previously employed, were developed independently by Pictet in Geneva and Cailletet in Paris, and a little later by the Cracow professors Wroblewski and Olzewski, also working independently. Pictet, working on a commercial scale, employed a series of liquefied gases to gain lower and lower temperatures by successive stages.
M. Cailletet devised a cheaper process, by employing another hydrocarbon that rises from the mud of marshes, and is called formene. MM. Cailletet, Wroblewski, and Olzewski have continued their experiments in liquefaction, and acquired increased facility in the handling of liquid ethylene, formene, atmospheric air, oxygen, and nitrogen.
This result was obtained in 1877 by Pictet and Cailletet almost simultaneously. Cailletet had also liquefied the newly discovered acetylene gas. Five years later Wroblewski liquefied marsh gas, and the following year nitrogen; while carbonic oxide and nitrous oxide yielded to Olzewski in 1884.
M. Wroblewski, of Cracow, who had witnessed some of M. Cailletet's experiments, and obtained his apparatus, and M. Olzewski, in association with him, also experimented with ethylene, and had the pleasure of recording their first complete success early in April, 1883. Oxygen, having been previously compressed in a glass tube, became a permanent liquid, with a clearly defined meniscus.
The work of Professor Dewar has perhaps been the most comprehensive and varied, but the researches of Pictet, Wroblewski, and Olzewski have also been important, and it is not always possible to apportion credit for the various discoveries accurately, since the authorities themselves are in unfortunate disagreement in several questions of priority.
Rossel, who succeeded Cluseret, was a real soldier, who tried in vain to organize the defence and to put experienced military men in command as subordinate generals. To do this he had to choose three out of five from men who were not Frenchmen. Dombrowski and Wroblewski were Poles, and General La Cecilia was an Italian.
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