with respect to water reduced to the state of vapour by an additional dose of caloric; since those persons who do not make a particular study of objects of this kind, are still ignorant that water, when in a temperature only a little above the boiling heat, is changed into an elastic aëriform fluid, susceptible, like all other gasses, of being received and contained in vessels, and preserving its gasseous form so long as it remains at the temperature of 80° (212°), and under a pressure not exceeding 28 inches of the mercurial barometer. As this phenomenon has not been generally observed, no language has used a particular term for expressing water in this state[1]; and the same thing occurs with all fluids, and all substances, which do not evaporate in the common temperature, and under the usual pressure of our atmosphere.
For similar reasons, names have not been given to the liquid or concrete states of most of the aëriform fluids: These were not known to arise from the combination of caloric with certain bases; and, as they had not been seen either in the liquid or solid states, their existence, under these forms, was even unknown to natural philosophers.
- ↑ In English, the word steam is exclusively appropriated to water in the state of vapour. E.
