The discovery of oxygen, part 1 / Experiments by Joseph Priestley, LL.D. (1775).

  • Priestley, Joseph, 1733-1804.
Date:
1901
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The discovery of oxygen, part 1 / Experiments by Joseph Priestley, LL.D. (1775). Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Repeating this experiment on marble, in a glass-phial with a ground-stopple and tube, I extracted from an ounce-measure of it about two pints of air, the greatest part of which was so highly dephlogisticated, that it took nearly three equal quantities of nitrous air to saturate it. Even the last produce was hardly to be distinguished from the first. What remained in the phial after the experiment swelled and broke it. From magnesia, both calcined and uncalcined, I got, in a gun-barrel, a considerable quantity of air. From the calcined magnesia it was not much better than common air ; from the uncalcined it was more than twice as good. But very probably this difference may not be invariable. I think it very probable that dephlogisticated air may be procured from any kind of earth with which the spirit of nitre will unite ; especially if it will likewise admit of a combination with fixed air or alkaline air, so that the spirit of nitre must expel the fixed air or alkaline air, before it can incorporate with it. Of substances of these kinds, besides those above mentioned, I tried salt of tartar and wood-ashes. . From half an ounce of salt of tartar, moistened with smoking spirit of nitre, and dried, I got, in a gun-barrel, about half a pint of air, the greatest part of which was fixed air, with a residuum so far dephlogisticated, as to be about three times as good as common air. The produce of air, in this experiment, was not very rapid, and it continued a long time. More would have been collected; but that part of it escaped at the luting. I moistened about half an ounce-measure of ashes of wood, carefully burned, first in an iron-ladle, and then in a crucible, with strong smoking spirit of nitre; and, in a gun-barrel, I got from it about three pints of air, part of which was fixed, precipitating lime in lime-water, tsic. and the rest was so pure, that it absorbed nearly