This expansion, nevertheless, causes a fall in the temperature, because the gas in the experiment is not a perfect gas, and, by an ingenious process, the refrigerations produced are made cumulative.
Several physicists have proposed to employ a method whereby liquefaction should be obtained by expansion with recuperable external work.

This method, proposed as long ago as 1860 by Siemens, would offer considerable advantages.

Theoretically, the liquefaction would be more rapid, and obtained much more economically; but unfortunately in the experiment serious obstacles are met with, especially from the difficulty of obtaining a suitable lubricant under intense cold for those parts of the machine which have to be in movement if the apparatus is to work.
M.Claude has recently made great progress on this point by the use, during the running of the machine, of the ether of petrol, which is uncongealable, and a good lubricant for the moving parts.

When once the desired region of cold is reached, air itself is used, which moistens the metals but does not completely avoid friction; so that the results would have remained only middling, had not this ingenious physicist devised a new improvement which has some analogy with superheating of steam in steam engines.

He slightly varies the initial temperature of the compressed air on the verge of liquefaction so as to avoid a zone of deep perturbations in the properties of fluids, which would make the work of expansion very feeble and the cold produced consequently slight.