XV. Experiments made with the view of decompounding fixed air, or carbonic acid

• Published in: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: The Royal Society 1792
• Subjects: Priestley; Carbonic acid
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstl.1792.0019; https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rstl.1792.0019

From a Paper read to the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh, in 1755, published in the second volume of the Physical and Literary Essays , Doctor Black appears to have discovered the affinities between an aëriform substance, which he called fixed air , and alkalies, quick-lime, and magnesia. His experiments also shewed, that many properties of these bodies depended upon the union and separation of this air. The discovery of these facts established this elastic fluid to be a peculiar species of substance. Mr. Cavendish, Dr. Brownrigg, Dr. Priestley, Sir Torbern Bergman, Mr. Bewley, Mr. Kirwan, and other chemists, afterwards extended, very considerably, the history of fixed air. The question, whether it was a simple or compound body, was discussed; and by many persons it was believed to have been proved, that fixed air was composed of phlogiston and respirable air. But some of the principal facts, upon which this belief was founded, being afterwards demonstrated to be erroneous; and the production of fixed air being, to the apprehension of many chemists, more satisfactorily accounted for by the new principles of chemistry, this doctrine of its composition became no longer tenable. As the science of chemistry advanced, many acids were demonstrably proved to consist of a peculiar basis, and respirable air; and on the ground of analogy it was concluded, that all other acids were composed in a similar manner. Fixed air having been shewn, by Mr. Bewley, and by Berggman, to be an acid, of course its composition was considered, in the new system of chemistry, to be similar to that of all other acids. On examining facts already well ascertained, and by various experiments discovering others, no clear instance could be perceived of the formation of fixed air, but in those cases where charcoal was applied red hot to respirable air. Mr. Lavoisier at last established this interesting fact, by a conclusive experiment, published in a volume of the Memoirs of the Academy of Sciences in 1781, and in his Traité Elémentaire in ...