SPECTROCHIMICA

ACTA
PART B

ELSEVIER Speetrochimica Acta Part B 52 (1997) 667-674

Historical Review

The development of the nitrous oxide-acetylene flame for atomic

1
absorption spectroscopy a personal account
J.B. W i l l i s
211 Orrong Road. East St. Kilda, Vic. 3183. Australia
Received 1 September 1996;accepted6 January 1997

Keywords: Atomic absorption spectrometry; Flame AAS; Nitrous oxide-acetylene flame; History; Review

1. Introduction (Max) Amos, which has helped to reconcile some of

Some time ago I decided to try to write an account
of the development of the nitrous oxide-acetylene
flame for use in atomic absorption spectroscopy,
chiefly to help clarify in my own mind the sequence
of events and the interactions I had with other workers
in the field of high-temperature flames in the 1960s. I
mentioned this to Walter Slavin, who expressed his
interest in the project and in seeing the results of my
efforts. When I sent him the final version in August
1996, he asked me to submit it for publication as a
Historical Review in Spectrochimica Acta. It was with
some diffidence that I agreed to do so: the account was
written for my own interest and not for publication,
and I felt that its informal and somewhat anecdotal
style might not be appropriate for a scientific journal.
Furthermore, many of the literature references are to
internal reports of the CSIRO Division of Chemical
Physics, which are not readily accessible to most
people. I leave it to the reader to judge the value
and interest of this review.
During the writing of this account, I have had con-
siderable correspondence and discussion with M.D.
i Dedicated to the memoryof James Eric Allan (1919-1972), a
true friend and colleague.
the differences in our recollections of the events of
more than thirty years ago. I have also had valuable
correspondence with O.E. (Owen) Clinton in New
Zealand. Owen worked closely with J.E. (Eric)
Allan, the first person to experiment with the nitrous
oxide-acetylene flame in atomic absorption spectro-
scopy, from the late 1950s until Eric's untimely death
in 1972. Nevertheless, this review remains a very
personal account.
2. My early experiences with flames and burners
I first became involved in AAS early in 1958, when
Alan Walsh asked me to develop a method for the
determination of calcium in blood serum using this
technique. The first atomic absorption instrument
described by Walsh and his group [1,2] had used an
air-coal gas flame burning at a Meker burner, the
analytical solution being sprayed into it by a glass
nebulizer and spray chamber. Thus it was natural
that I should begin by trying to use this system. How-
ever, I soon concluded that in real analytical situations
air-coal gas was useless for calcium, and I turned to
air-acetylene. Many laboratories were reluctant to
use acetylene for safety reasons, so much of my

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668 J.B. Willis/Spectrochimica Acta Part B 52 (1997) 667-674
early applications work on the determination of heavy
metals in various materials was done with an air-coal
gas flame, though I soon abandoned the Walsh system
in favour of a metal nebulizer and cylindrical Bakelite
spray chamber with paddles [taken from an Evans
Electroselenium Ltd. (EEL) flame photometer] and a
10-cm slot burner.
The other early workers on AAS in Australia and
New Zealand (D.J. David of Canberra and J.E. Allan
of Hamilton) had the good fortune to be working in
agricultural laboratories already equipped with
Lundegardh components for emission spectroscopy,
using premixed air-acetylene burning at a short slot
burner. Thus they were not deterred by the fear of
explosions when using acetylene flames.
The CSIRO Division of Soils in Adelaide lent me a
Lundegardh nebulizer, spray chamber and burner,
which enabled me to demonstrate that the premixed
air-acetylene flame was at least as good as a turbulent
oxy-hydrogen or oxyacetylene flame of the Beckman
type for determining calcium [3]. (The Beckman
burner was a direct-injection nebulizer-burner,
designed for emission flame spectroscopy.) The
Lundegardh equipment was excellent in principle,
but the burner was unduly short for AAS and the
nebulizing system, in which the glass spray chamber
had to be removed after spraying each solution, was
too cumbersome to be of real interest in a routine
analytical laboratory. I replaced the burner with one
10 cm long made of sheet stainless steel, and replaced
the nebulizing system with the EEL components
described above.
The burner tended to distort with heat and to pro-
duce explosions, so I replaced it by one of massive
construction. This was used for an extensive survey of
the performance of a simple AAS instrument by Brian
Gatehouse and myself [4]. The massive burner would
have been too expensive to manufacture commer-
cially, but Stuart Skinner, whose firm made the
mechanical components of the "do-it-yourself"
AAS kits at that time, suggested making a 10-cm
slot burner from a length of 1 in. diameter stainless
steel tubing with the slot cut into it and the ends sealed
by bungs which could blow out in case of explosion. I
think this was in 1961, and the first printed reference I
can find to it is in a list of suitable components for AA
spectrometers of the type developed by CSIRO, dated
April 1962. It is described as costing eight pounds ten
shillings (A$17). One of these burners was sent to
Perkin-Elmer, who copied it (with the addition of
restraining wires on the bungs) for their Model 214
atomic absorption spectrometer [5].
By the end of 1962 I had developed a number of
applications of AAS in the clinical field and had
helped many laboratories in various areas of work to
set up suitable equipment. I was now ready to try to
extend the AAS technique to metals, such as alumi-
nium, that were not appreciably atomized in the air-
acetylene flame. I had read the paper by Robinson [6]
on the use of the oxygen-cyanogen flame in AAS.
Although this flame had a temperature of about
4500°C it had not proved very satisfactory for the
reasons I have elaborated elsewhere [7], and when I
found that cyanogen was not commercially available
in Australia I decided that 1 would have to look for
another high-temperature flame. Like other workers at
that time, I experimented with a fuel-rich oxyacety-
lene flame burning at a Beckman burner, and found
promising sensitivities for aluminium and beryllium
[8], but the well-known drawbacks of turbulent flames
in AAS made some alternative approach desirable.
I was away from Australia for most of 1963, work-
ing at the National Chemical Laboratory, Teddington,
England. On the way there I paid a visit to the Ames
Laboratory, Iowa State University, and was shown
what I call their "limited premix" burner for oxyace-
tylene. This consisted of a Beckman burner at the
bottom of a short vertical graphite tube that allowed
some mixing of the acetylene and oxygen before they
reached the top of the tube, where they burned as a
flame [9]. On returning to Australia towards the end of
that year, I had a graphite tube made up to the speci-
fications of the Iowa State group, but found that it
would operate satisfactorily only if the aspirated solu-
tion contained at least 90% of organic solvent [10].
During my absence in England, the Fourth Austra-
lian Spectroscopy Conference had been held (Can-
berra, August 1963), and at it M.D. Amos and P.E.
Thomas described their work on the determination of
aluminium using premixed flames of acetylene burn-
ing in oxygen-enriched air (typically 50% oxygen-
50% nitrogen) at a massive burner with a relatively
short slot. They achieved good characteristic concen-
trations for aluminium and subsequently published
their results [ 11 ]. This was undoubtedly the first really
useful high-temperature flame for use in AAS. I am
 J.B. Willis/Spectrochimica Acta Part B 52 (1997) 667-674
not sure when I learnt about this work, but it was
probably early in 1964 - - certainly in that year I
visited Max Amos at the Sulphide Corporation,
Cockle Creek, N.S.W., and we discussed the problems
of high-temperature flames and the design of suitable
burners for them.
Having concluded that the Iowa State "limited
premix" burner was not very promising for AAS
work, I decided with some trepidation to try fully
premixed oxygen-acetylene, and had a burner con-
structed for this purpose. It consisted of a single row
of 25 holes of 0.61 mm internal diameter made by
press-fitting lengths of stainless steel hypodermic
needle at 3 mm centres into a water-cooled brass
block 8 mm thick, and fitted to an all-metal spray
chamber. Even with a luminous flame the sensitivity
for aluminium was poor, which I attributed to low
transport efficiency of aerosol and to each hole acting
as a small discrete area of atomization. Furthermore,
there was the risk of flashback if the acetylene flow
was reduced too far, and a tendency for the burner
holes to become clogged by carbon and salts [12].
3. The nitrous oxide-acetylene flame
I have given this detailed background to show what
the state of affairs in flame AAS was in 1964, and
what my own experiences with burners and flames
had been. It seemed to me that people had rung the
changes on all the likely fuel gases: coal gas, propane,
hydrogen, acetylene, and even cyanogen. Of these
acetylene had been the most useful and seemed
most likely to form the basis of a flame hot enough
to atomize metals such as aluminium but safe enough
to be burnt in premixed form at a laminar burner. This
left the question of oxidant - - was there any alterna-
tive to air or oxygen?
I cannot remember the exact sequence of my
thought processes at this point, but there were prob-
ably three strands.
1. Out of my subconscious popped a hitherto use-
less piece of information acquired in high-school
chemistry about 1937 or 1938. We learned the pre-
paration and properties of all the inorganic gases, and
saw most of them prepared in the laboratory using
pneumatic troughs, beehive shelves, and the rest of
the paraphernalia of classical chemistry. The ability
669
of a gas to support combustion was demonstrated by
plunging a lighted splinter of wood into the container
of gas. We learned that "only two gases will rekindle
the glowing splint: oxygen and nitrous oxide". I have
recently unearthed the textbook we used [13], which
says:
Nitrous oxide is readily decomposed into its
components at a red heat and above. It therefore
readily supports combustion, for almost any
burning substance is hot enough to decompose
the gas and so form a mixture of nitrogen and
oxygen, which supports combustion more vig-
orously than air. Feebly burning sulphur or a
splinter just tipped by a feeble spark do not
produce enough heat to do this and are extin-
guished in the gas... From other neutral gases
[apart from oxygen] it is distinguished by the
fact that it relights a brightly glowing splinter of
wood.
2. Beginning in 1957, a series of papers had
appeared from Hedwig Kohn's group in the Depart-
ment of Physics, Duke University, North Carolina,
dealing with the measurement of collisional half-
widths of spectral lines, using experimental inten-
sity-density curves for the emission from metals in
the flame. I had almost certainly noticed these, though
not with great interest or understanding - - my invol-
vement in this area did not begin until I carried out
quantitative studies of the degree of atomization of
metals in flames during my stay at the Ames Labora-
tory in 1967-8. In one of the Kohn papers [14] the
authors increased the temperature of a premixed air-
acetylene flame burning at a Meker-type burner from
2500 K to 2760 K by adding nitrous oxide to the air
supply. They said:
In order to reach flame gas temperatures higher
than 2500 K, N20 rather than 02 was chosen as
an additional oxidizer. N20 does not have the
undesirable property of oxygen of raising the
burning velocity drastically (E. Bartholome
and C. Hermann, Z. Elektrochem., 1950, 54,
169) and thereby making the flame gases turbu-
lent and difficult to control.
3. In a book by Gaydon and Wolfhard [15] I noticed
a diagram (Fig. 5.3 on p. 91) showing the dependence
of burning velocity on the final flame temperature for
670 J.B. Willis/Spectrochimica Acta Part B 52 (1997) 667-674
a number of fuel-oxidant combinations. This diagram
showed a point for nitrous oxide-acetylene which
suggested a temperature of about 3240 K and a burn-
ing velocity of about 163 cm s -1. Nitric oxide-
acetylene was shown as having a temperature of
about 3370 K and a burning velocity of only about
84 cm s -1. Correspondence with Dr Wolfhard in
1967-8 revealed that these were almost certainly cal-
culated temperatures.
Thus my reading confirmed my belief that a pre-
mixed nitrous oxide-acetylene flame was worth
trying. I also remembered from my student days that
the nitrous oxide molecule was endothermic, so that if
it could be used as an oxidant its energy of formation
should supply additional heat to the flame.
From the diagram in Gaydon and Wolfhard's book,
a nitric oxide-acetylene flame seemed even more
promising. Nitric oxide, however, was not commer-
cially available in Australia, and furthermore I knew
that in contact with air it formed the toxic and corro-
sive nitrogen dioxide (NO2). Later work at Perkin-
Elmer [16,17] showed that a nitric oxide-acetylene
flame had no significant advantages over nitrous
oxide-acetylene.
Unfortunately my laboratory notebook for the per-
iod November 1963 (when I returned from England)
to October 1964 has long disappeared. The next book
begins on 8 October 1964, and it seems to have been at
this time that I began experimental work on nitrous
oxide-acetylene, using in the first place the water-
cooled "row of holes" burner mentioned previously,
but soon giving this up in favour of massive slot bur-
ners, in particular one with a slot 75 mm x 0.25 mm
[18]. I was keen, if at all possible, to use a burner for
nitrous oxide-acetylene based on the Skinner (tubu-
lar) type, supplied at that time by Techtron as standard
for air-coal gas and air-acetylene flames. This would
have enabled them to offer a hot flame with the mini-
mum of trouble and expense, but explosion problems
made it completely impossible to use a tubular burner
for nitrous oxide-acetylene flames.
As mentioned above, I was in contact with Max
Amos in 1964, and about October of that year I
received on loan from him a burner he had used for
aluminium determination in the oxygen-enriched air-
acetylene flame. It consisted of a massive steel plate
with a slot 30 mm × 0.46 mm, which was held by
springs on to a small glass adaptor that allowed it to
be used with the Techtron AA-3 spray chamber
assembly.
After our supplier of gases had made up for me
cylinders of various oxygen-nitrogen mixtures, I
was able, with Max's burner, to reproduce on my
AAS instrument the results for aluminium that he
and Thomas had obtained. This was just before Christ-
mas 1964. Using the oxygen-enriched air-acetylene
flame I also measured Be, V, Sn, Ba, Cr, Mo, Ca and
Mg. The Ca/P and Mg/AI interferences were almost
completely eliminated. Using the Amos burner, I
found the same absorbance for A1 with nitrous
oxide-acetylene as with oxygen-nitrogen-acetylene.
In January 1965 Max came to Melbourne to work
for Techtron, which enabled us to collaborate much
more conveniently. We decided that the nitrous
oxide-acetylene approach was the one to take for a
commercial instrument. Geoff Frew, managing direc-
tor of Techtron, was keen to get a product on the
market as soon as possible, and if possible by the
1965 Pittsburgh Conference. So we discussed the
parameters of slot length and width, and Bob Atkins
and Alan Jones at Techtron made up a series of burners.
We looked at their performances and recommended to
Techtron that the best size was 50 mm x 0.46 mm. Max
took a burner with these dimensions to Pittsburgh and
was armed with both the nitrous oxide-acetylene and
the oxygen-nitrogen-acetylene results.
This assessment of the hot flame situation is sum-
marized in the following extract from the Division of
Chemical Physics 25th Quarterly Report, covering the
period December 1964-February 1965:
The usefulness of the nitrous oxide-acetylene
flame as an alternative to the oxygen-nitrogen-
acetylene flame has been proved. The sensitiv-
ities for equivalent burner lengths are very simi-
lar, but the former flame has the following
advantages:(a) there is no need to have special
nitrogen-oxygen mixtures made up and
bottled;(b) it is possible to turn off either nitrous
oxide or acetylene first without mishap;(c) with
the lower flame speed the size of the burner slot
is far less crucial, so that(d) it is possible to
design a burner which is safe for both low-
temperature (air-coal gas, air-acetylene) and
high-temperature flames.The use of nitrous
oxide-acetylene has been decided on for the
high-temperature flame in the new Techtron
 J.B. Willis/Spectrochimica Acta Part B 52 (1997) 667-674
AA-100 instrument, which is currently being
exhibited at the Pittsburgh Applied Spectro-
scopy Conference.The work on atomizers and
burners is being written up for presentation at
the Fifth Australian Spectroscopy Conference
[Perth, 1965] and also for publication.
Early in 1965 I wrote a letter for submission to
Nature on the nitrous oxide-acetylene flame and
quoted the sensitivities 1 had obtained for A1, Be, Si,
Ti, W and V. As was usual at this period the CSIRO
authorities sent it for "internal refereeing": it went to
D.J. David, of the Division of Plant Industry. David
telephoned me to ask why I had made no reference to
Eric Allan's experiments on nitrous oxide-acetylene
which had been mentioned in a general lecture at the
Third Australian Spectroscopy Conference (Sydney,
1961), at which both he (David) and I had been pre-
sent. I said I couldn't remember hearing Eric say any-
thing about nitrous oxide-acetylene, but on looking
up the report on the Conference in Nature [ 19] I found
the statement:
The work in atomic absorption being carried out
at the Rukuhia Soil Research Station was
described by Mr J.E. Allan. Extension to the
range of elements accessible to the technique
by the use of nitrous oxide acetylene flames is
being investigated...
Naturally, I contacted Eric, who sent me the brief
notes of his lecture and indicated that he had aban-
doned the work because of the poor sensitivities
obtained. Having incorporated this information in
my manuscript, I submitted it to Nature, where it
appeared on 14 August 1965 [20].
I then studied the applicability of the nitrous oxide-
acetylene flame to the determination of some twenty
other metals which were not atomized in the air-acet-
ylene flame.
I also studied the extent of ionization of metals such
as the alkaline earths in high-temperature flames and
methods for its suppression, and showed that interfer-
ences such as those of phosphorus on calcium and
aluminium on magnesium could be overcome by the
use of these flames [21 ].
Meanwhile, Amos had extended his studies of oxy-
gen-nitrogen-acetylene flames to many of the same
metals that I was studying in nitrous oxide-acetylene,
671
and had obtained very similar results. He had also
studied the important enhancement effects of iron
and hydrofluoric acid on the absorption of Hf, Ta,
Ti and Zr in his flames. As our results had many
features in common, and we had collaborated in the
later stages of burner design, we wrote up our work as
a joint paper [221.
For thirty years "Amos and Willis" has been
quoted as the source publication on the nitrous
oxide-acetylene flame, so I thought the above
account of how it came to be written might be of
interest.
4. Some questions about the history of the
NeO-C2H2 flame
With the virtue of hindsight, I think it is of interest
to try to answer a number of questions that suggest
themselves.
4.0.1. Why did it take so long for someone to consider
the possibility of using the nitrous oxide-acetylene
flame to atomize metals forming refractoo, oxides?
The shortcomings of the air-acetylene flame for
this purpose were recognized from the beginning by
workers such as John David and Eric Allan. Informa-
tion on nitrous oxide as a possible support gas for
flames bad been available for some time, though
mostly in places rather remote from the literature of
analytical chemistry and spectroscopy [23]. Allan,
who had obviously considered the possibility of
using a nitrous oxide-acetylene flame in AAS some
time before mid-1961, gave no indication of how he
came to think of it, and since he is no longer alive it is
unlikely that we shall ever know for certain. Owen
Clinton, who worked closely with Eric and built the
burner he used [24], said in a letter to the author:
My association with Eric in all of this work was
very exciting and rewarding. I can only assume
that the time spent on attempts to use premixed
nitrous oxide-acetylene was very brief, unsuc-
cessful, and further work "left until later". My
guess is that the original "idea" came from his
very wide knowledge of chemistry and physics,
his remarkable memory, and his familiarity with
much literature relative to analytical chemistry.
Max [Max Sutton, who succeeded Allan at the
672 J.B. Willis/SpectrochimicaActa Part B 52 (1997) 667-674
Ruakura Agricultural Research Centre] has
found nothing in the early records of the labora-
tories in his possession relative to the nitrous
oxide-acetylene saga [25].
As far as I myself am concerned, I think that the
reason is that for the first five years after I began work
in AAS I was fully occupied doing applications work
in order to help analysts in a wide range of fields,
installing equipment in their laboratories, testing com-
ponents and providing technical help for the three
small companies manufacturing AAS accessories in
Melbourne, etc. As I indicated earlier, it took me some
time to reconcile myself even to the need for air-
acetylene flames: I just was not ready to begin think-
ing about still hotter and more dangerous flames at
this time.
4.0.2. Why did Allan find such poor sensitivities in
N20-CeH2?
I believe this was because he was using the wrong
type of burner. My own experiments with 10-cm slot
burners suggested that with this length the red inter-
conal zone was a fishtail shape and appeared only at
the ends of the burner, leading to poor sensitivity.
Thus I would expect Allan's 12 cm x 0.25 mm burner
to show this effect even more. Owen Clinton agrees
this was probably the reason, and says:
My own recollection of our early work with
nitrous oxide-acetylene is that it was unsuc-
cessful because, as you surmised, our 12 cm x
0.25 mm burner was too long. After your own
success, and with hindsight, I remember we
wished that we had started with a 2 cm Lunde-
gardh burner and progressively lengthened the
slot to eventually obtain the optimum sensitiv-
ity, as we had done during the development of
the air-acetylene burner [26].
4.0.3. Why did I forget Allan's paper at the 1961
Conference ?
Psychologists would probably argue about this, but
I believe it was because I was preoccupied with other
things at the time. A brief statement by Eric that he
had tried an unusual gas mixture and that it had failed
to produce useful results was not likely to impress
itself on my memory.
In retrospect, it was a blessing that I did forget what
Allan said at the Sydney conference. I've always had
the highest regard for Eric's work, and if I'd remem-
bered that he'd tried something and been unsuccessful
with it, I'd have been most unlikely to bother repeat-
ing the experiment.
In a letter to me dated 17 February 1993, Max
Amos said that he felt sure Eric had mentioned the
nitrous oxide-acetylene flame at the Canberra confer-
ence in August 1963. However, the only paper by Eric
in the programme of that Conference, or in the report
on it [28], is entitled "Absorption flame photometry
below 2000 A " , and it was the text of this paper that
Eric sent me when I asked him what he had said at
Canberra.
Ignorance was also a blessing with regard to the
burning velocity of the nitrous oxide-acetylene
flame. The low burning velocity, little more than
that of air-acetylene, quoted by Bartholome and by
Wolfhard and Parker encouraged me to try the flame
for AAS. It soon appeared to me, however, that the
velocity must be significantly higher than this. Indeed,
Butler and Fulton [27] later measured it as about 680
cm s -1. If I had known this at the beginning, I would
probably have been most reluctant to try to burn pre-
mixed nitrous oxide-acetylene at a slot burner.
4.0.4. Why did I eventually succeed in developing a
nitrous oxide-acetylene flame for use in AAS ?
By 1964 I had six years' experience in flame AAS
and had acquired some knowledge of and feeling for
the behaviour of various types of flame and burner.
Like most other early workers I had begun by assum-
ing that to obtain maximum sensitivity in flame AAS
it was necessary to use the longest practicable flame. It
took some time to realize that this was not always so
and that, particularly for high-temperature flames, a
shorter burner might be better. Trials with the massive
10-cm burner built for me in 1960 for the work with
Brian Gatehouse showed me that nitrous oxide-
acetylene could be safely burnt at this burner, even
though the sensitivity was poor. Discussion with Max
Amos no doubt stimulated me to consider using
shorter burners, and his burner for premixed oxygen-
nitrogen-acetylene proved an excellent starting point
for experiments of this type.
By this time I had done all I needed to do in the
applications field of flame AAS and this left me free to
 J.B. Willis/Spectrochimica Acta Part B 52 (1997) 667-674
turn my attention to a study of the factors governing
the operation of the various components of the
atomization system and the efficiency of atomization
in the flame. A necessary part of this work was the
construction of a variable-uptake nebulizer [29],
which proved invaluable when I began to study
high-temperature premixed flames, whose per-
formance is far more critically dependent on sample
aspiration rate than is that of cooler flames.
The Division of Chemical Physics had an excellent
workshop, which made many experimental
nebulizers, spray chambers and burners for me.
5. The value and significance of the nitrous
oxide-acetylene flame
The advent of the nitrous oxide-acetylene flame
allowed the addition of some 25 metals to the list of
those that could be determined by AAS using the air-
acetylene flame.
Provision for its use was rapidly made by all man-
ufacturers of atomic absorption spectrometers. Thirty
years after its introduction, this flame is still used
throughout the world. As well as being valuable in
atomic absorption work, it was found to be an excel-
lent source in flame emission spectroscopy [30].
Flame emission spectroscopy, however, rapidly lost
its attraction after the introduction of atomic absorp-
tion as an analytical technique.
Reviewing progress in AAS during the year 1965,
Slavin said:
The most important advance of the past year [in
flame AAS] has undoubtedly been Willis's dis-
covery that nitrous oxide and acetylene provide
a high-temperature flame that burns at a low
velocity and is satisfactory for the determination
of a wide range of elements that form refractory
oxides in the air-acetylene flame [31].
Walsh, in reflecting on the history of the AAS tech-
nique in a special issue of Spectrochimica Acta Part B
commemorating the 25th anniversary of his first paper
on AAS, said:
The applications [of flame methods of atomiza-
tion] became wider still after 1965 when my
colleague Dr J.B. Willis developed the nitrous
oxide-acetylene flame. This not only extended
673
the method to refractory elements but greatly
reduced the chemical interferences encountered
in many determinations using lower tempera-
ture flames. This work by Willis contributes
the most important single development in
flame methods during the past 25 years [32].
It is very gratifying that the paper by Amos and
Willis was included among the fourteen "classic"
Spectrochimica Acta articles (seven on molecular
and seven on atomic spectroscopy) reprinted in a spe-
cial issue of that journal published in 1989 to mark the
50th anniversary of Spectrochimica Acta [33].
I have always regarded the development of the
nitrous oxide-acetylene flame as my chief contribu-
tion to analytical atomic spectroscopy.
References
[1] J.P. Shelton, A. Walsh, Proc. XV Int. Conf. Pure Appl. Chem.,
Lisbon, 1956, IV-50, p. 403.
[2] B.J. Russell, J.P. Shelton, A. Walsh, Spectrochim. Acta 8
(1957) 317.
[3] Chemical Physics Section 78th Bimonthly Report, April-May
1958.
[4] B.M. Gatehouse, J.B. Willis, Spectrochim. Acta 17 ( 1961 ) 710.
[5] W. Slavin, Anal. Chem. 63 (1991) 1033A.
[6] J.W. Robinson, Anal. Chem. 33 (1961) 1067: errata, Anal.
Chem. 34 (1962) 907.
[7] J.B. Willis, Appl. Opt. 7 (1968) 1295.
[8] Division of Chemical Physics 17th Quarterly Report,
December 1962-February 1963.
[9] R.N. Kniseley, A.P. D'Silva, V.A. Fassel, Anal. Chem. 35
(1963) 910; 36 (1964) 1287.
[10] Division of Chemical Physics 21st Quarterly Report,
December 1963-February 1964; 22nd Quarterly Report,
March-May 1964.
[11] M.D. Amos, P.E. Thomas, Anal. Chim. Acta 32 (1965) 139.
[I 2] Division of Chemical Physics 22nd Quarterly Report, March-
May 1964; 23rd Quarterly Report, June-August 1964, 24th
Quarterly Report, September-November 1964.
[13] F.S. Taylor, Inorganic and Theoretical Chemistry, 3rd edn.,
Heinemann, London, 1935.
[14] F.W. Hofmann, H. Kohn, J. Opt. Soc. Am. 51 (1961) 512.
[15] A.G. Gaydon, H.G. Wolfhard, Flames - - Their Structure,
Radiation and Temperature, Chapman and Hall, London,
1953.
[16] D.C. Manning, At. Absorpt. Newsl. 4 (1965) 267.
[17] W. Slavin, A. Venghiattis, D.C. Manning, At. Absorpt. Newsl.
5 (1966) 84.
[18] Division of Chemical Physics 24th Quarterly Report,
September-November 1964.
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[19] R.A. Durie, Nature 192 (1961) 927.
[20] J.B. Willis, Nature 207 (1965) 715.
[21] Division of Chemical Physics 27th Quarterly Report, June-
August 1965.
[22] M.D. Amos, J.B. Willis, Spectrochim. Acta 22 (1966) 1325;
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[23] R. Mavrodineanu, Bibliography on Flame Spectroscopy--
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of papers, including one by H.B. Dixon and W.F. Higgins, The
burning of gases in nitrous oxide, Fuel Sci. Pract., 6 (1927)
232; Chem. Abstr., 21 (1927) 3445.
[24] O.E. Clinton, Spectrochim. Acta 16 (1960) 985.
[25] O.E. Clinton, letter to J.B. Willis, 10 February 1993.
[26] O.E. Clinton, letter to J.B. Willis, 24 April 1992.
[27] L.R.P. Butler, A. Fulton, Appl. Opt. 7 (1968) 2131.
[28] C.K. Coogan, J.D. Morrison, A. Walsh, J.K, Wilmshurst,
Nature 200 (1963) 319.
[29] D.A. Davies, R. Venn, J.B. Willis, J. Sci. Instrum. 42 (1965)
816; addendum, J. Sci. Instrum., 43 (1966) 406.
[30] M.D. Amos, unpublished work; E.E. Pickett, S.R. Koirtyo-
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[31] W. Slavin, At. Absorpt. Newsl. 5 (1966) 42.
[32] A. Walsh, Spectrochim. Acta Part B 35 (1980) 639.
[33] Future Trends in Spectroscopy: Special Supplement to Vol. 45
of Part A and Vol. 44 of Part B of Spectrochimica Acta (1989).