The Rusting of Iron

Abstract

THE problem of the atmospheric corrosion of metals is a very old one. So long ago as 1769, only three years after Cavendish had demonstrated the solubility of chalk and magnesia in water charged with “fixed air” or carbonic anhydride, it was shown by T. Lane, an apothecary of the City of London, that “water impregnated with fixed air will dissolve a considerable quantity of iron, and thereby become a strong chalybeate ”(Priestley, “Experiments on Air,”1772). Lane records (Phil. Trans., 1869, 1., 218) that “the clear water..., decanted from the filings and oqhrous sediment..., being exposed to the open air, presently threw up a party-coloured pellicle, and deposited a yellowish sediment.”