On the atomic weight of chlorine

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Six years ago Professor Dixon and I began a research with the object of determining directly the weight of chlorine which combines with the unit weight of hydrogen. Our method was to burn a jet of hydrogen in an atmosphere of chlorine; hydrogen being stored and weighed in palladium, the chlorine being condensed and weighed as liquid. The number we obtained for the combining weight of chlorine was appreciably higher than that found indirectly by Stas, and still higher than that approved by the International Committee on Atomic Weights. While this research was in progress, other determinations had been made bearing on the relative weights of silver, chlorine, and nitrogen, so that some modification in the accepted values of one or more of these elements appeared inevitable. The direct “joining up” of the two ends of the chain connecting hydrogen with chlorine thus became a matter of immediate importance. Since the method of burning one gas in an atmosphere of the other had been proved to be accurate within fairly narrow limits, I was encouraged to continue the investigation, and to modify the apparatus, with a view to eliminate some of the possible sources of error in the former series of experiments.