Retort
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Retort. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
The Encyclopedia of Founding (1892)
A vessel employed for the purpose of decomposing bodies by the aid of heat, the process being termed distillation. Those used in the chemist's laboratory are a kind of globular bottle, with a long neck bent at an angle of about sixty degrees with the belly of the retort; they are made of glass, porcelain, platinum, earthenware, etc., according to the substances to be acted upon. The spirit-lamp, gas, or sand-bath is usually employed for heating glass retorts, but when higher temperatures are required it is necessary to use those made of platinum or earthenware. Single retorts for distilling coal-gas are usually made D-shaped, about 21 X 14 inches X 9 feet, closed at one end, and provided with a mouthpiece at the other. Through retorts are made twice this length, with both ends open, but having mouthpieces which close them during the process of distillation. Formerly these retorts were all made of cast iron, but they are fast being superseded by those made of fire-clay, which admit of higher temperatures and last much longer. The distillation of mercury from cinnabar is conducted in retorts similar to those used for making illuminating-gas. See DISTILLATION; MERCURY; TAR.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a vessel in whose chamber an object is subjected to distillation or decomposition by heat, a neck conducting off the volatile products. The retort of the chemical laboratory is a vessel of R A F C RETORT A-Adapter. F-Flask. R-Retort. glass, platinum, porcelain, or other material. It is bottle-shaped, having a long neck attached, in which the products of the distillation are condensed, and from which they pass into the receiver. The retort of the gas works is a cylinder or segment of a cylinder, formed of clay or
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The two big uses described here have gone in opposite directions. The coal-gas retort — the 1892 account's D-shaped cast-iron or fire-clay chamber "21 X 14 inches X 9 feet" — is obsolete in Britain and North America, where town gas made by roasting coal was replaced by natural gas in the 1960s and 70s and the retort houses were demolished. The classic laboratory retort, the "globular bottle" with its bent neck, has likewise almost vanished from working benches, displaced from the early 20th century by round-bottomed flasks with interchangeable ground-glass joints and separate condensers, and later by the rotary evaporator; it survives mainly as a symbol of alchemy and chemistry. The word itself is still live in industry, though, in the retorting of oil shale and in the recovery of mercury and zinc by heat, much as Collier's described in 1921.
Written for this edition, 2026.