Galvanick Lucipher

From the Quicksilver Metaweb.

The Cryptonomicon page for a unique source of light in the dark.

Stephensonia

Lucifers are an old term for matches in some civilized places in the world - lighter consisting of a thin piece of wood or cardboard tipped with combustible chemical; ignites with friction; "he always carries matches to light his pipe"      Both Waterhouse and Qhnxh are encased in planklike wrappings of genuine Qghlm wool, and the latter carries the GALVANICK LUCIPHER. The Galvanick Lucipher is of antique design. Ghnxh, who is about a hundred years old, can only smile in condescnension at Waterhouse's U.S. Navy flashlight. In the sotto voce tones one might use to correct an enormous social gaffe, he explains that the galvanick lucipher is of such a superior design as to make any further reference to the Navy model a grating embarrassment for everyone concerned. He leads Waterhouse back to a special room behind the room behind the room behind the room behind the pantry, a room that exists solely for maintenance of the galvanick lucipher and the storage of its parts and supplies. The heart of the device is a hand-blown spherical glass jar comparable in volume to a gallon jug. Ghnxh, who suffers from a pretty advanced case of either hypothermia or Parkinson's, maneuvers a glass funnel into the neck of the jar. Then he wrestles a glass carboy from a shelf. The carboy, labeled AQUA REGIA, is filled with a fulminant orange liquid. He removes its glass stopper, hugs it, and heaves it over so that the orange fluid begins to glug out into the funnel and thence into the jar. Where it splashes out onto the tabletop, something very much like smoke curls up as it eats holes just like the thousands of other holes already there. The fumes get into Waterhouse's lungs; they are astoundingly corrosive. He staggers out of the room for a while.     When he ventures back, he finds Ghnxh whittling an electrode from an ingot of pure carbon. The jar of aqua regia has been capped off now, and a variety of anodes, cathodes, and other working substances are suspended in it, held in place by clamps of hammered gold. Thick wires, in insulating sheathes of hand-knit asbestos, twist out of the jar and into the business end of the galvanick lucipher: a copper salad bowl whose mouth is closed off by a Fresnel lens like the ones on a lighthouse. When Ghnxh gets his carbon whittled to just the right size and shape, he fits it into a little hatch in the side of this bowl, and casually throws a Frankensteinian blade switch. A spark pops across the contacts like a firecracker.      For a moment, Waterhouse thinks that one wall of the building has collapsed, exposing them to the direct light of the sun. But Ghnxh has simply turned on the galvanick lucipher, which soons becomes about ten times brighter, as Ghnxh adjusts a bronze thumbscrew. Crushed with shame, Waterhouse puts his Navy flashlight into its prissy little belt holster, and precedes Ghnxh out of the room, the galvanick lucipher casting palpable warmth on the back of his neck. "We've got about two hours before she goes dead on us," Ghnxh says significantly.

Authored entries

• TBA

Wikipedia: Aqua Regia

Aqua regia (Latin for “royal water”) is a highly corrosive, fuming yellow liquid, formed by a fresh mixture of concentrated nitric acid and concentrated hydrochloric acid, usually in the ratio of one to three. It is one of the few reagents able to dissolve gold and platinum. It was so-named because it can dissolve the so-called royal, or noble metals; although tantalum and a few other extremely passive metals are able to withstand aqua regia. Aqua regia is used in etching and in certain analytic procedures. Aqua regia does not last very long, thus it has to be mixed right before use.

Aqua regia works to dissolve gold, even though neither constituent acid will do so alone because, in combination, each acid performs a different task. Nitric acid is a powerful oxidizer, which will actually dissolve a tiny (virtually undetectable) amount of gold, forming gold ions. The hydrochloric acid provides a ready supply of chloride ions, which react with the latter, thus taking the gold out of the solution. This allows further oxidation of gold to take place, and so the gold is dissolved.

Note: Aqua regia should not be confused with acquaragia which is more commonly known as turpentine in English and is a completely different substance from aqua regia.

A carboy is a glass vessel used in fermenting wine, mead and sometimes beer. Usually it is fitted with a rubber stopper and an airlock to prevent bacteria from entering during the fermentation process.

Carboys come in various volumes ranging from 1 gallon to 6.5 gallons. A 15 gallon carboy is often called a demijohn.

Galvanic cell batteries

The Galvanic cell, named after Luigi Galvani, consists of two metals connected by an electrolyte which forms a salt bridge between the metals. In 1780, Luigi Galvani discovered that when two different metals (copper and zinc for example) were connected together and then both touched to different parts of a nerve of a frog leg at the same time, they made the leg contract. He called this “animal electricity.”. This discovery paved the way for all electrical batteries. - complete in link.

Ben Franklin and the Darwin Wedgewood family: somehow links to this due to electricity and being Moonstones.