[Ads-l] Fwd: Antedating of "Hydrogen"

[James Landau]

resending this email with line breaks to make it readable


On  Wed, 23 Nov 2022 22:02:50 Zone + 0000  "Shapiro, Fred" <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU>  wrote  < hydrogen (OED 1791)
<< 1790 _Times_ 17 June 3/4 (Newspapers.com)
<< Dr. Beddoes, Mr. Edwards, a Commoner of Pembroke College, and Mr. Sadler, the famous English aerostatist, sent up a balloon from Pembroke College garden, filled with hydrogen gas from marshes.
<< Fred Shapiro


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Actually Dr. Shapiro back in 2002 submitted an earlier antedating:
>From fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU  Sat Jan 24 01:41:59 2004
From: fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU (Fred Shapiro)
Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 20:41:59 -0500
Subject: Antedating of "Hydrogen"
Message-ID: <FRI.23.JAN.2004.204159.0500.ADSL at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>

hydrogen (OED 1791)

1788 Louis Bernard, Baron Guyton de Morveau _Method of chymical
nomenclature, proposed by Messrs. De Morveau, Lavoisier_ 49 (Early English
Collections Online)  Ammoniac should not be admitted, because it has been
discovered to be a combination of azot and hydrogen.

Fred Shapiro

*****************************************************Modern chemical nomenclature was invented by Lavoisier and his circle.  The English translation of Morveau's book,as far as I know, was the introduction into English of the Lavaoiser-et-al nomenclature, and therefore may be the English-language terminus a quo for "hydrogen".I was able to find a number of other antedatings in Morveau.  Apparently Dr. Shapiro made an on-line search to find this one antedating without checking the rest of Morveau's book. Using only the short selection from Morveau's
book in Herbert S. Klickstein, ed, _A Source Book in Chemistry_ Princeton NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1986,I was able to supply the OED, if I remember correctly, in 1995, with antedatings for:
    acetate
    acetic acid
    acetite
    acetous acid
    acidify
    azote ["azot" in the 1790 cite is an alternate spelling]
    azotic
    benzoate
    benzoic acid
    borate
    caloric (noun, synonym for "phlogiston")
    carbon
    carbonate
    carbonic (acid)
    carburet (noun, now called "carbide")
    gallate
    gallic acid
    gaseous
    muriate
    muriatic acid
    nitrate
    nitric acid
    nitrite
    nitrous acid (meaning HNO2; before Lavoisier "nitrous acid" meant HNO3,
which chemical is now called "nitric acid")
    oxygen
    oxygenate
    phosphate
    phosphite
    phosphoric acid
    pyroligneous acid (in this particular entry the OED gives a 1787 citation
from the original French text of Morveau)
    sulphate
    sulphite
    sulphuric acid
    sulphurous acid

"acidifying" and "phosphoric acid" were used by Cavendish in 1784.  "muriatic acid" was used by Joseph Black in 1755.  All 3 of these antedatings are in Klickstein.Aside: the 1790 quote contains inaccurate chemistry.  The "gas from marshes" is not hydrogen,it is methane, which is also lighter than air and can be used for making balloons airborne..James A. Landau

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