Water controversy

The evidence and arguments in the so-called 1 Water-Controversy may be found in the following works ... 

Another twenty years passed, and little was mentioned of this matter. Then Dominique Arago, celebrated astronomer and Secretary of the French Academy, came to England to gather material for a eulogy of James Watt. He made what seemed to him a thorough examination of the water controversy, and came to the conclusion that James Watt was the... 

I believe that in altering the kettle story Watt Jr s main objective was to make a claim about his father s experimental (and therefore philosophical) approach to the improvement of the steam engine and, in particular, to assert his father s independence of Joseph Black in that regard. Of course, insofar as this established Watt s scientific credentials and capacities it did support his case in the water controversy in a general sense. However, in modifying the anecdote Watt Jr almost certainly had the propagation of ideas about the relationship between the kettle and the separate condenser in mind. 

A central element in this process was the water controversy concerning whether Watt, Cavendish or Lavoisier should be recognized as the discoverer of the compound nature of water. I have examined this controversy, and the forces that drove it, in considerable detail elsewhere.1 In this chapter I focus on the way in which the controversy, together with Watt s self-fashioning in the later years of his life, radically transformed Watt s chemical reputation and in particular determined the extent to which he was recognized as a chemist at all. 

The Water Controversy and the Demise of Watt s Chemical Fame... 

Wilson s Life of Cavendish is a remarkable book for the minuteness of the detail that it enters into about the water controversy. Overall the work is a vindication of Cavendish s claims and a denial of Watt s. But in the course of its arguments the book sometimes conceded a good deal to Watt s reputation as a chemist. Wilson oscillated between the kind of rampant presentism that Whewell favoured and a thoroughgoing contextualisin in which he sought to... 

One of the main outcomes ofWatt s chemical activities in the early 1780s was his only high-profile chemical publication, the paper offering Thoughts on the Constituent Parts of Water and of Dephlogisticated Air which was published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in 1784.64 This paper is, as we have seen, the chief basis for Watt s claim to have discovered the composition of water. Whilst its importance in that connection is undeniable, discussion of it in relation to the water controversy has, I believe, contributed to the neglect of serious attempts to understand the complexities of the chemical views that it presents. 

When, in the early 1780s, Priestley experimented on the extraction of air from substances of volcanic origin he was still concerned to gain insights into the consumption of air by volcanoes. And when, in what are usually seen as key documents in the water controversy, Priestley heated water in contact with calcareous substances and claimed to produce air from water, he was completing the circle by showing how atmospheric air may have been produced in the first... 

See D. P. Miller, Discovering Water James Watt, Henry Cavendish and the Nineteenth-Century Water Controversy (Aldershot Ashgate, 2004). 

Forbes to William Whewell, 29 October 1848, Whewell Papers, Trinity College Library, Cambridge, Add. Ms. a. 204/84. In this letter Forbes identified Henry, Lord Brougham, among whose many roles was as an advocate of Watt in the water controversy) as the very beau-ideal of Macaulay s 19th Century man) (See Miller, Discovering Water, p. 256.)... 

On the controversy over priority, see J. P. Muirhead, Correspondance of the Late James Watt on His Discovery of the Theory of the Composition of Water (London, 1846) Sidney M. Edelstein, Priestley Settles the Water Controversy, ... 

Chymia 1, 1948, 123-137 Robert E. Schofield, Still More on the Water Controversy, Chymia 9,1964, 71-76 W. A. Smeaton, Is Water Converted into Air. Guyton de Morveau Acts as Arbiter between Priestley and Kirwan, Ambix 15, 1968, 73-83. 

Edelstein, Sidney M. Priestley Settles the Water Controversy. Chymia 1,1948, 123-137. 

Schofield, Robert. Still More on the Water Controversy. Chymia 9, 1964, 71-76. 

Suffice it to say, we will not solve The Water Controversy here. The key figures are Henry Cavendish, James Watt, and Antoine Lavoisier. Volta s eudiometer (see Figure 200) stimulated Priestley, Cavendish, and others to use this technique. Although James Watt (1736-1819), inventor in 1765 of a vastly improved steam engine, made a strong case that he first recognized that water is a... 

The debate about who actually discovered the chemical composition of water (H2O) was called the water controversy in the nineteenth century. With respect to the discovery of the chemical composition of water, three scientists must be regarded as candidates (Kopp 1869) Cavendish, who was probably the first (in 1781) to carry out experiments to form water by combining phlogiston and dephlo-gisticated air (O2), also called good, pure, vital, fire air (in German gute Luft,... 

Cavendish — Electrical Researches — Dynamics, etc. — Experiments on Heat — Chemical Work — Experiments on Gases — Water Analysis — Equivalents — Eudiometry — The Composition of Water — Cavendish s Synthesis of Water — The Composition of Nitric Acid — Milner — The Water Controversy — Watt — De Luc. 

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