Adrien-Jean-Pierre Thilorier

Adrien-Jean-Pierre Thilorier (16 February 1790 – 2 December 1844) was a French inventor who was the first person to produce solid carbon dioxide ("dry ice").

[1][2] Jean-Charles achieved some notoriety:[3] In 1786, he served as defense attorney to Count Alessandro di Cagliostro in the "Affair of the Queen's Necklace".

Count Cagliostro was suspected of being involved in the fraud and was arrested, but Thilorier won a verdict of not guilty.

Jean-Charles was also interested in science and mechanics: He invented a radeau-plongeur (diving wheel) to allow vehicles to cross rivers.

[9] Mention of Thilorier's technical work first appeared in 1826: he developed and patented a "hydrostatic lamp" for lighthouses.

[20] However, he later suggested that compressed air could be used to provide a portable source of air for undersea divers (such as Paul Lemaire d'Angerville), to carbonate soda water, to force oils and syrups through filters, to serve as the fluid in a hydraulic press, or to power a vehicle or even a submarine.

[21] In 1832, Thilorier won the Montyon prize for mechanical improvements yet again, after submitting a "hydrostatic vacuum pump".

The apparatus could be dangerous: On 30 December 1840, Osmin Hervy, who prepared scientific demonstrations for lectures at the School of Pharmacy in Paris, was operating one of Thilorier's machines when the gas-generating cylinder exploded.

[25] By 1845, the Belgian chemists Daniel-Joseph-Benoît Mareska (1803-1858) and François-Marie-Louis Donny (1822-1896) had replaced the iron with copper and lead.

The receptacle is formed from a vessel of lead contained in a cylinder of copper surrounded by rings of iron.

[29] However, with an ample and reliable supply of liquid carbon dioxide, Thilorier was able to observe and measure its properties, such as its vapor density and its extraordinary rate of expansion with temperature, under a wide range of conditions.

[30] At the 12 October 1835 meeting of the French Academy of Sciences, a letter from Adrien Thilorier was read in which he stated that he had solidified carbon dioxide:[31] Original: Si l'on dirige un jet d'acide carbonique dans l'intérieur d'une petite fiole de verre, elle se remplit promptement, et presque en entier, d'une matièr blanche, pulvérulente, floconneuse, qui adhère fortement aux parois, et qu'on ne peut retirer qu'en brisant la bouteille.Translation: If one directs a jet of [liquid] carbonic acid [i.e., carbon dioxide] into the interior of a small glass vial, it quickly fills, and almost completely, with a material [that is] white, powdery, fluffy, which adheres strongly to the walls [of the vial], and which one can remove only by breaking the bottle.What is particularly interesting about Thilorier's discovery of dry ice is that he did not realize that he had solidified carbon dioxide until a group of scientists from the French Academy of Sciences explained to him what he had accomplished:[32] Original: M. Thénard fait remarquer que M. Thilorier n'avait pas encore imaginé, au moment de la visite des commissaires de l'Académie, que la substance blanchâtre obtenue par lui fût de l'acide carbonique solide.

Ce fait, dit-il, a été reconnue et constaté par la commission: c'est elle qui a soumis l'acide à la plupart des expériences citées par l'auteur.Translation: Mr. Thénard [i.e., French chemist Louis Jacques Thénard (1777 – 1857)] noted that Mr. Thilorier had still not imagined, at the time of the visit of commissioners of the Academy, that the whitish substance obtained by him was solid carbonic acid.

This fact, he says, was recognized and noted by the committee: it is they who submitted the acid to most of the experiments cited by the author [i.e., Thilorier].Thilorier thought that the liquid carbon dioxide had caused water vapor in the air to freeze on the vial; he was puzzled when the "snow" sublimated instead of melting.

[42] This (mistaken) identification was mentioned by Duane H. D. Roller, a graduate student at Harvard University, in a paper that was published in 1952.

[44] By 2003, Joost Mertens, a Dutch historian of science, had verified many of the findings that Ms. Ambrière-Fargeaud had made about Thilorier.

In 1832, the Bulletin of the laws of the kingdom of France also lists him as "Thilorier (Adrien-Jean-Pierre)" and as an employee of the Post Office, who resided at number 21 on the Place Vendôme in Paris, and as the inventor of a gas compressor.