Today in Technology History

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January 17

Inventor and chemist Robert Hare was born in Philadelphia on January 17, 1781.

Hare's early education was at home so he could help operate his family's brewery. In his teen years he became interested in chemistry after attending some lectures; by the time he was twenty years old, he had made his single greatest invention.

Fascinated by the use of chemicals to produce heat, Hare believed it was possible to create an extremely intense flame by burning certain gases. He used materials from his father's brewery, including a large keg, to create chambers for hydrogen and oxygen. These gases were then expelled through tin tubes, creating a stream of mixed gas that could be ignited to produce a hot flame.

Hare's invention, the oxyhydrogen blowpipe, could be used to fuse together metals that no normal furnace could fuse. It can therefore be considered an ancestor of the modern blowtorch and welding equipment.

Hare later became a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, where he wrote an important chemistry textbook and taught for three decades. He also invented a number of other instruments related to chemistry, including a form of battery and devices for freezing water and measuring heat.

Perhaps his last invention was a "spiritoscope" -- a device intended to disprove occult claims made by mediums and spiritualists. However, Hare's skepticism was somehow overcome, and he spent his later years defending and advocating the spiritualist point of view instead of attacking it.

He died in 1858.

Related links:

• This page has a biography of Hare.

• Click here for another biography of Hare, and biographies of some of his relatives.

• Click here to read about blowpipes.

• Hare was the first person to be awarded the Rumford prize, the first prestigious award given to American inventors and scientists. Click here for a list of the recipients of the Rumford prize.

 

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