Priestley, Joseph Water

Priestley, Joseph (1796). Considerations an the Doctrine of Phlogiston and the Composition of Water. Philadelphia. 

Priestley, Joseph (1800). The Doctrine of Phlogiston Established and that of the Composition of Water Refuted. Northumberland, PA. 

Priestley, Joseph (1733-1804) British chemist, who in 1755 became a Presbyterian minister. In Leeds, in 1767, he experimented with carbon dioxide ( fixed air ) from a nearby brewery with it he invented soda water. He moved to a ministry in Birmingham in 1780, and in 1791 his revolutionary views caused a mob to burn his house, as a result of which he emigrated to the USA in 1794. In the early 1770s he experimented with combustion and produced the gases hydrogen chloride, sulphur dioxide, and dinitrogen oxide (nitrous oxide). In 1774 he isolated oxygen see also Lavoisier, Antoine Laurent). 

Combustion has a very long history. From antiquity up to the middle ages, fire along with earth, water, and air was considered to be one of the four basic elements in the universe. However, with the work of Antoine Lavoisier, one of the initiators of the Chemical Revolution and discoverer of the Law of Conservation of Mass (1785), its importance was reduced. In 1775-1777, Lavoisier was the first to postulate that the key to combustion was oxygen. He realized that the newly isolated constituent of air (Joseph Priestley in England and Carl Scheele in Sweden, 1772-1774) was an element he then named it and formulated a new definition of combustion, as the process of chemical reactions with oxygen. In precise, quantitative experiments he laid the foundations for the new theory, which gained wide acceptance over a relatively short period. 

Joseph Priestley studied various gases in the 1770s. He was the first to produce and drink carbonated water, and he was the first to isolate oxygen from air. Priestley thought oxygen was air with its normal phlogiston removed so it could burn more fuel and accept more phlogiston than natural air. 

The English scientist Joseph Priestley first discovered nitrous oxide in 1793. He made N20 by heating ammonium nitrate in the presence of iron filings, and then passing the resulting gas through water to remove toxic by-products. 

As photosynthesis in higher plants provides us food and oxygen for our sustenance, its importance can hardly be overemphasized. More than 200 years ago, Joseph Priestley first described oxygen evolution in plants as a photosynthetic process. We now know that it is a complex process taking place within photosystem II at the lumenal surface of the thylakoid membrane (see Fig. 1, left), where water molecules are oxidized, or, perhaps more accurately, split, to release elemental oxygen ... 

In 1781, Joseph Priestley and Henry Cavendish observed droplets condensing in the vessels in which inflammable air (hydrogen) burned. These droplets were shown to be water. A couple of years later, Lavoisier came up with an explanation for this... 

The importance of inflammable air became clear about fifteen years after Cavendish presented his paper. Joseph Priestley (1733-1804) was also interested in gases, and in 1781 told Cavendish of the results of some of his own experiments. When Priestley used an electrostatic machine to spark ordinary air with inflammable air, he noticed that water was formed. Cavendish repeated this experiment, as well as others like it, but using oxygen (or, as he called it, dephlogisticated air ) in place of ordinary air. 

The first practical use for carbon dioxide was discovered in the mid-eighteenth century by the English chemist Joseph Priestley (1733-1804). Priestley found that passing carbon dioxide into water produced a sparkling, refreshing drink that he predicted would one day become a great commercial success. He was, of course, correct, since water containing carbon dioxide is the basic component of which all soda drinks are made. 

Sulfur dioxide was first studied in detail by the English physicist and chemist Joseph Priestley (1733-1804), who invented a method for collecting gases over water. 

FIGURE 198. Collage of Joseph Priestley s pneumatic apparatus. A gun barrel is used as reaction chamtx and placed in a fireplace. The resulting gases, if water-soluble, are collected over mercury (Fig. 11). 

Carbon monoxide was a puzzlement during the late eighteenth century when it was discovered independently by Torbem Bergman, Joseph Marie Francois de Lassone, and Joseph Priestley." Steam passed over red-hot charcoal produces water gas, which is useful for combustion energy but highly toxic. (We understand today that it is a mixture of CO, H2, and CO2). Priestley ob-... 

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