Abstract
INSULATING-SUPPORTS are so indispensable in the work of an electric laboratory that several forms have come into extensive use. The plan devised by Sir W. Thomson for securing high insulation by surrounding a glass stem with concentrated sulphuric acid to absorb the moisture which otherwise would condense from the air and form a conducting film over the surface of the glass is remarkably efficient, and has many advantages. Modifications of this form of insulator have been largely used by Prof. Clifton, F.R.S., in the Clarendon Laboratory, and by Profs. Ayrton and Perry in the laboratories of the Technical College at Finsbury. Another modification due to M. Mascart, was described in NATURE, vol. xviii. p. 44; and this pattern has come into extensive use under the name of the support isolant Mascart. Though excellent in every way it is very expensive, as its manufacture necessitates a special piece of glass-blowing. The central support of glass is solidly fused into the bottom of a glass vessel with a very narrow neck into which acid is poured through a tubulure at the side.
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THOMPSON, S. A Cheap Insulating Support . Nature 29, 385 (1884). https://doi.org/10.1038/029385a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/029385a0