Last year the world was struggling for oxygen cylinders. It started exactly 248 years ago. On August 1, 1774, a man in his early 40s was conducting a series of experiments in his laboratory to understand the nature of air. Through the experiment of the day, nature revealed one of its fundamental truths to a man named Joseph Priestley. Its effect is a key point in chemistry.
In past experiments, Joseph Priestley looked for different elements of air and tried to observe their properties. In an experiment, he observed that when a burning candle was placed in a jar, it went out. He knew that the fire was extinguished because of the absence of an element of air.
However, he found that placing a green plant in the same jar and exposing it to sunlight would bring back air, allowing the flame to burn. Then he realized that plants could produce the chemical element needed for combustion. They tried to take the component apart and test it.
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On August 1, Priestley took a lump of a red solid called mercuric oxide and placed it in an inverted container on top of the mercury. Then he took a bucket and shone the sunlight on the red lump. He burned the material and collected the air produced by it.
The collected air was five or six times better than ordinary air, and it allowed the candle to burn four times longer than before. Priestley called it “diphlogisticated air”.
Antoine Lavoisier later named this chemical substance oxygen. This discovery was an important source for Lavoisier to develop his revolutionary theory of chemical reactions. Priestley’s discovery broke the idea of air as an indestructible element and paved the way for modern chemistry.
Born in England in 1733, Priestley had to leave the country because of his strong and unorthodox views on religion and politics. On February 6, 1804, after dictating some changes to his manuscripts to his son and an assistant, he died a few minutes without pain.
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