Gradually, they noticed a change. The metallic appearance became dulled, the silver color slowly losing its whiteness. A layer of distinct, if dull, yellow was being built up. For fifteen minutes, the current ran and then Sills broke the circuit with a contented sigh.
“It plates perfectly,” he said.
“Good! Take it out! Let’s see it!”
“What?” Sills was aghast. “Take it out! Why, that’s pure ammonium. If I were to expose it to ordinary air, the water vapor would dissolve it to NH 4 OH in no time. We can’t do that.”
He dragged a rather bulky piece of apparatus to the table. “This,” he said, “is a compressed-air container. I run it through calcium chloride dryers and then bubble the perfectly dry oxygen (safely diluted with four times its own volume of nitrogen) directly into the solvent.”
He introduced the nozzle into the solution just beneath the spoon and turned on a slow stream of air. It worked like magic. With almost lightning speed, the yellow coating began to glitter and gleam, to shine with almost ethereal beauty.
The two men watched it with beating heart and panting breath. Sills shut the air off, and for a while they watched the wonderful spoon and said nothing.
Then Taylor whispered hoarsely, “Take it out. Let me feel it! My God!—it’s beautiful!”
With reverent awe, Sills approached the spoon, grasped it with forceps, and withdrew it from the surrounding liquid.
What followed immediately after that can never be fully described. Later on, when excited newspaper reporters pressed them unmercifully,