Note 32 — CANTO I. OURSELF!
Reading edition
And if the theory of Babbage, &c.
Charles Babbage, Esq. A. M., Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in the University of Cambridge, [Eng.] and member of several academies, has written and published a work On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, which furnished that impulse to our Organ of Constructiveness which eventuated in the accomplishment of the solid gas manufactory above alluded to.
“In Iceland the sources of heat [to wit, hot springs, volcanoes, &c.] and their proximity seem almost to point out the future destiny of that island. The use of its glaciers may enable its inhabitants to liquefy the gases with the least expenditure of mechanical force; and the heat of its volcanoes may supply the power necessary for their condensation. Thus, in a future age, power may become the staple commodity of the Icelanders, and of the inhabitants of other volcanic districts; and possibly the very process by which they will procure this article of exchange for the luxuries of happier climates, may, in some measure tame, the tremendous element which occasionally devastates this province.”
By our improvement, after the gases are condensed into a liquid, they are made solid by the total abstraction therefrom of every particle of caloric, insomuch that a thermometer, of our invention, with its bulb in a ball of gas, indicated 999 degrees below 0 of Fahrenheit.