ting calcium, but found in the furnace a brown, crystalline mass, which was decomposed by pouring water on it, yielding an inflammable gas. Willson is not a chemist, and he therefore sent specimens of the material to several men of science to determine its nature. It was shown to be calcium carbide, a compound of calcium and carbon, formed by the action of the carbon on the calcium oxide. The reaction expressed in chemical symbols is CaO + 3C = CaC2 + CO. The gas formed by the action of water was acetylene, a compound of carbon and hydrogen. The reaction is CaC2 + H2O = C2H2 + CaO; calcium carbide and water form acetylene and lime. If water enough is added, the lime is slaked, and slaked lime, or calcium hydroxide, Ca(OH2), is formed. Neither calcium carbide nor acetylene was a new discovery; acetylene was discovered by Edmund Davy in 1836, and its properties were studied by Berthelot in 1862. Impure calcium carbide was first made in 1802 by Wöhler, who described its decomposition by water into acetylene and lime. What was there new, then, in Willson's discovery? Two important facts: (1) He was the first to make carbide by a method applicable commercially; (2) he was the first to make crystalline carbide. Wöhler's carbide was impure and amorphous; Willson's, nearly pure and crystalline, so that he succeeded in obtaining United States patents for crystalline carbide, and, as all carbide made by commercial processes is crystalline, its manufacture is covered by Willson's patents.
In the same year, 1892, Prof. Henri Moissan, of Paris, announced the discovery of crystalline calcium carbide. Moissan's discovery, too, was an accidental one. He was reducing refractory metallic oxides in an electric furnace made of lime. At the close of the article in which he reports his work to the French Academy of Sciences (Comptes Rendus de l'Academie Française, vol. cxii, page 6, December 12, 1892) he refers in two lines to the formation of an ill-defined carbide of calcium by the action of the carbon electrodes on the lime of which his furnace was made.
As is common with most important inventions, there is a dispute as to the priority of making carbide by an electric furnace; and the wonder is, not that there is a dispute, but that there are so few claimants. A few words of explanation of the electric furnace will show why. The enormous heat of the electric furnace (2000° to 3000° C.) is caused by an electric arc, formed by currents playing between carbon electrodes; carbon is often used in the furnace processes; here we have one constituent of calcium carbide. Lime, the material for the other constituent, withstands heat better than any other common substance excepting magnesia: naturally, inventors would use it, as Moissan did, as a refractory lining to the furnace. Electric furnaces were not new. The conditions then were such that the discovery of
