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FunctionThe unusually thick glass walls of this eudiometer tube suggest that the instrument was made to withstand the explosion which resulted when oxygen and hydrogen were combined by means of an electric spark. When the tube was filled with a mixture of these two gases, the experimenter could seal the tube with the steel cap, remove it from the pneumatic trough, touch it to a Leyden jar or conductor for the spark, and then pass it around the class so that the students might see the "dew" deposited on the inner walls.
Published ReferencesDavid P. Wheatland, The Apparatus of Science at Harvard, 1765-1800 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968), 167.