"Sal ammoniac" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... examination of various flames (for it is only in a state of vapour that matter emits distinctive light) was a young Scotchman named Thomas Melvill, who died in 1753, at the age of twenty-seven. He studied the spectrum of burning spirits, into which were successively introduced sal ammoniac, potash, alum, nitre, and sea-salt, and observed the singular predominance, under almost all circumstances, of a particular shade of yellow light, perfectly definite in its degree of refrangibility[368]—in other words, taking up a perfectly definite position in the spectrum. ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... in one form or another down to the 17th century. Of course there were numerous variations and refinements. Thus in the Speculum Naturale of Vincent of Beauvais (c. 1250) it is said that there are four spirits—mercury, sulphur, arsenic and sal ammoniac— and six bodies—gold, silver, copper, tin, lead and iron.3 Of these bodies the two first are pure, the four last impure. Pure white mercury, fixed by the virtue of white non-corrosive sulphur, engenders in mines ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia |
