Apparatus for Impregnating Liquids with Gases (US Patent 412,664)
primary document · 1889
LINK
SUMMARY
Radam's own US patent for the apparatus that made the Microbe Killer, and the primary record of what the product actually was. Read directly from the patent text (Google Patents US412664A, fetched 2026-06-11): the invention 'relates to apparatus for impregnating water or other suitable liquid with the fumes emanating from the consumption of a combustible composition of matter, such as sulphur, which when ignited emits a gas containing suitable medicinal qualities'; the tank is built of brick and cement, lined with glass and slate, with wooden faucets, 'no metal ... being used in the structure, owing to its liability to be affected by the acids generated in using the apparatus'; the process imparts 'a sour acid taste to the liquid in from four to twenty-four hours, according to the strength I desire to attain.' Patent number (412,664), date (Oct. 8, 1889), filing (July 15, 1889, Serial No. 317,518), inventor (William Radam, of Austin, Travis County, Texas), and witnesses copied from the fetched patent. The drawing sheet (this archive link, Wikimedia Commons via DPLA / University of North Texas Libraries, public domain as a US patent) is used as the object-role media asset. Separately, Barnett dates an earlier Radam patent for preserving food to September 28, 1886. Cited for the product's composition and mechanism; the patent is the authoritative primary record that the Microbe Killer was sulphur-fume-acidulated water.
NOTES
US Patent No. 412,664 (“Apparatus for Impregnating Liquids with Gases,” granted October 8, 1889) is Radam’s own specification of how the Microbe Killer was made, and it settles what the liquid was. The patentee is named as William Radam of Austin, Travis County, Texas; the apparatus is a large brick-and-cement tank lined with glass, slate, or tile and fitted with wooden faucets, because, in Radam’s words, metal is liable “to be affected by the acids generated in using the apparatus.” Sulphur (with other combustible matter) is burned and its fumes passed through water until the liquid acquires “a sour acid taste,” the strength governed by the time of exposure, “from four to twenty-four hours.” The document is cited as a primary record of composition and mechanism: the curative agent was water charged with the products of burning sulphur, that is, a dilute sulphurous and sulphuric acid solution, not a pharmacologically active medicine. Its drawing sheet, digitized from the patent by the University of North Texas Libraries and released as public domain on Wikimedia Commons, also serves as the case’s object-role illustration of the manufacturing apparatus.