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"DUFAY (DU FAY), CHARLES FRANCOIS DE CISTERNAY. - PHOSPHORESCENCE.
Reference : 46595
(1732)
Mémoire sur un grand Nombre de Phosphores nouveaux.
(Paris, L'Imprimerie Royale, 1732). 4to. Without wrappers. Extracted from ""Mémoires de l'Academie des Sciences. Année 1730"". Pp. 524-535.
First appearance of Dufay's importent work on phosphorescence.""Chemists had long been acquainted with a fes minerals like the Bologna stone (BaS) and Balduin's hermetic phosphor (plain CaS) that glowed after exposure to light. Greatmystery surrunded those expensive and supposedly rare substances. Dufay detested mysteries and held as a guiding principle that a given physical property, however bizarre, must be assumed characteristic of a large class of bodies, not of isolated species. He found that almost everything except metals and very hard gems could be made phosphorescent: he depressed the phosphor market by describing his procedure: and he became sensitive to the endless small variations in the physical properties of bodies. 'How many things behave that seemed similar, and how many varieties there are in effects that seemed identical."" (Heilbron ""Electricity in the 17 & 18 Centuries"", p. 251).Another paper attached to Dufay's paper is Charles Pitot ""Reflexions sur le Mouvement des Eaux"". Pp. 536-544 a. 1 folded engraved plate. (Poggendorff II:p. 459).Partington ""A History of Chemistry"" III, p.66
"DUFAY (DU FAY), CHARLES FRANCOIS DE CISTERNAY. - THE DISCOVERY OF POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE CHARGE OF ELECTRICITY.
Reference : 46590
(1735)
Premier- (Quatrième) Mémoire sur L'Électricitè. (1. Histoire de L'Électricité. 2. Quels sont les Corps qui sont susceptibles d'Électricité. 3. Des Corps qui sont le plus vivement attirés par les matiéres électriques, & de ceux qui sont les plus p...
(Paris, L'Imprimerie Royale, 1735). 4to. Without wrappers. Extracted from ""Mémoires de l'Academie des Sciences. Année 1733"". Pp. 23-39, pp. 73-84, pp. 233-254 a. 1 engraved plate, pp. 457-476. With titlepage to the volume (1733/1735). Margins of titlepage with a few brownspots.
First appearance of these milestone papers in the histroy of electricity in which Dufay explains his discovery of two kinds of electricity and the relation between them, attraction and repulsion, shocks and sparking, and the full recognition of electrostatic repulsion. He formulates the two-fluid theory of electricity. He further showed that ""not all bodies can become electrified themselves"" (by friction) and went on to show, ""that they can all acquire a considerable (electrical) virtue when the tube (of rubbed) glass), wood, metals or liquids are brought near them,"", provided only that they are insulated by beiing stood on ""a support of glass or of sealing-wax"".Dufay ""TRANSFORMED A COLLECTION OF MISCELLANEOUS WEEDS INTO THE FIRST GARDEN OF EUROPE"" (Heilbron)""Dufay's substantive discoveries - ACR, the two electricities, shocks and sparking - are but one aspect, and perhaps not the most significant, of his achievement. His insistence on the impiortence of the subject, on the universal character of electricity, on the necessity of organizing, digesting and regulariizing known facts before grasping new ones, all helped to introduce order and professionel standards into the study of electricity at precisely the moment when the accumulation of data began to require them. He foundthe subject a record of often capricious, disconnected phenomena, the domain of the polymaths, textbook writers, and prfesional lecturers, and left a body of knowledge that invited and rewarded prolonged scrutinity from serious physicists."" (Heilbron ""Electricity in the 17 & 18 Centuries"", p. 260).Parkinson ""Breakthroughs"", 1734 P - Ronalds Library, p. 145. - Not in Wheeler Gift Cat.
Memoire sur les Barometres lumineux.
(Paris, L'Imprimerie Royale, 1725). 4to. Without wrappers. Extracted from ""Mémoires de l'Academie des Sciences. Année 1723"". Pp. 295-306.
First appearance of Dufay's first work. ""His first academic paper (1723), on the mercurial phosphorus, already displayed the characteristics which distinguished his later work: full command of earlier writings, clear prescriptions for producing the phenomena under study, general rules or regularities of their action, thorough study of possible complications or exceptions, and cautious mechanical explanations of a Cartesian flavor. This ""phosphor"" - the light sometimes visible in the Torricelli space when a barometer is jostled - much perplexed the physicists of the era, primarily because it did not always occur under apparently identical conditions. Dufay found that traces of air or water vapor occasioned the failures, which could be entirely eliminated with a technique of purification taught him by a German glassmaker. He explained the light in terms of Cartesian subtle matter squeezed from the agitated mercury"" although he knew the work of Francis Hauksbee (the elder), he suggested no connection with electricity.""(DSB).
