Fig. 13: Experiment with Volta’s battery on the absorption of oxygen
“Among the phenomena which it produces [i.e. the electromotive apparatus], the first to be examined, because it is the most general, is a rapid absorption of the oxygen of the air around the apparatus. This may be rendered apparent in a very simple manner, by placing a vertical pile upon a support surrounded with water, and covering it with a cylindrical jar of glass, which also dips into the water at its base, fig. 13. In a few instants, the water will be seen to rise in the interior of the jar, especially if we form the communication between the two poles of the pile by metal wires, so as to direct through them the circulation of the electricity: when no communication is formed, the absorption still goes on, but with much greater slowness. In every case, in more or less time, according to the volume of the pile, and the quantity of air which surrounds it, the absorption ceases, and the air remaining under the jar presents no more traces of oxygen. This phenomenon was discovered by MM. [Jean-Baptiste] Biot and Frédéric Cuvier, when the electromotive apparatus became first known in France” (p. 436).
