Grateful thanks are offered to the archivist of Trinity College, Oxford (Mrs C.J. Hopkins); the Library Assistants at University College London (Mrs C.J. Anderson), at The Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine (Miss Caroline Peck), the Librarians of the British Institute of Radiology (Mrs Gunnel Ingham), The Royal Society of Chemistry (John Kennedy), The Royal Society of Medicine (David W.C. Stewart), The University College of Wales (Richard Brinkley). And I must thank Dr T.G. Jones (Gayton) for searches in the Wirral and at Cheshire, and Dr Alun C. Davies of The Queen's University, Belfast, for many helpful comments.

¹ Davies, Mansel, Gas Liquefaction and Low Temperature Rectification, London, 1949.Google Scholar

² Gillispie, C.C., editor, Dictionary of Scientific Biography, New York, 1972. vi, 93.Google Scholar

2a From the eleventh to eighteenth centuries the Massey family lived at Old Hall, the last, a Jacobite, perished in Chester Castle dungeon in 1716. In 1851 it was occupied by a Mr Foster (tea-broker), and in 1881 by Mr Kilpatrick (farmer). No Hampson is listed in the returns for Puddington over 1851–1881.

³ von Linde, C., Zur Geschicshte der Maschinen für die Herstellung flüssiger Luft, Berichte Deutschen Chemischen Gesellschaft, (1899), 32, pp. 925–927.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴ An early account is Hampson, W., Liquefaction of air by self-intensive refrigeration, Nature, (1896) 55, 485.CrossRefGoogle Scholar A fuller account is given in: Self-intensive refrigeration of gases: liquid air and oxygen, Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry, (1898), 17, pp. 411–417.Google Scholar

The latter paper shows how thoroughly Hampson had controlled the design and operational details of his system: it reads like a report by a professional chemical engineer. One gains the impression that he must have worked on his method for several years, even before 1895, and he does make reference to its being ‘communicated to persons holding important scientific positions long before there was any publication of the process.’

It also shows he had a very good grasp of other refrigeration procedures. All of which suggests he had the time and the means to pursue these esoteric developments. In this paper he anticipates Dewar's challenge to his originality and, in a discussion which followed its presentation, it is clear that Dewar (out of obtuseness or meanness or what?) is not prepared to acknowledge Hampson's major new contribution. Dewar was not alone in this, but he was the one most unnecessarily so. Debate on Dewar's and other similar comments is silenced by recalling that, before Hampson's system was available, no-one had ever produced liquid air in litres per hour, and that Hampson's procedure did so within some twenty minutes of starting the operation.

⁵ Hampson, W. in Nature, (1898), 58Google Scholar, Liquefaction of hydrogen, p. 77; Liquid hydrogen, p. 174.

See also idemibid. (1896) 55, p. 485. In this earlier account Hampson wrote: ‘The receiver was a glass vessel protected by a vacuum of the kind invented by Mr Crookes (later, Sir William Crookes), first applied to refrigeration by M. Cailletet, of Paris, and improved and popularised by Professor Dewar.’ This comment of Hampson's could well be the source of the answer to the query bracketed in reference (4).

⁶ Travers, M.W., The Discovery of the Rare Gases, London, 1928, esp. pp. 89, 94, 98, 115Google Scholar; A Life of Sir William Ramsay, London, 1956, pp. 172–176.Google Scholar

⁷ Report of the Monopolies and Restrictive Practices Commission, H.M.S.O., 20 December 1956.

One detail which would have particularly interested Hampson relates to an internal B.O.C. memorandum which evaluated the total costs of tonnage oxygen production in 1952 as less than 3 sh. per 1000 cubic foot. In May 1951 the Steel Co. of Wales contracted to purchase at 9 sh. per 1000 cubic foot.

⁸ Hampson, W., Radium Explained, London (1906).Google Scholar

⁹ Hampson, W., Paradoxes of Nature and Science, London (1906).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁰ Hampson, W., ‘A Method of Reducing Excessive Frequency of the Heart-beat by means of Rhythmical Muscle Contractions Electrically Provoked,’ Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, (1912), 5, pp. 119–123.Google ScholarPubMed

¹¹ Roentgen Society's Journal, 03 1909, p. 32.Google Scholar

¹² Hampson, W., Modern Thraldom, London (1907).Google Scholar

¹³ Few of Hume's statements were more succinct or more categorical than: ‘Either the nation must destroy public credit, or public credit will destroy the nation’. Hume, David, Essays Moral and Political, Edinburgh, (1741), p. 92.Google Scholar