Tour the East Hall of the National Museum After the First Fifty Years

Joseph Priestley was born at Fieldhead, near Leeds, England, in 1733. He removed to the United States in 1794, and died 6th February, 1804.

His name will ever be remembered as the discoverer of Oxygen, or dephlogisticated air, as he called it, on the 1st of August, 1774, which is considered the date of the foundation of modern chemistry.

The first chemical investigations of importance made by Priestley were on carbon dioxide, carbonic acid, or fised air, as it was then called, and he has been called the father of pneumatic chemistry.

His apparatus was all made by himself or by unskilled workmen under his direction. He first introduced mercury for collecting gases soluble in and therefore not to be collected over water. The fact of carbon dioxide being soluble in water and also to a greater extent under increased pressure, was known to Priestley, hence our soda-water manufactory.

Another discovery of his was that of nitrous oxide. Fluoride of silicon, sulphurous acid, hydrochloric acid, nitrogen, ammonia, were all discbvered by Joseph Priestley. He was associated with Franklin in electrical investigations.

Of the most important gases known at present we owe nearly threefourths to Priestley. He was not only a brilliant chemist, but was also distinguished as a theologian, a political economist, a civilian, a physicist, a student of history, a teacher of men. "The hand that plunged the glowing taper into the primal jar of dephlogisticated air long since crumbled into dust, but science will not forget, through centuries to come, the historic receiver, burning lens, and taper, neither willingly let die the name of Priestley, who, in August, 1774, discovered OXYGEN." -Prof. Bodlev

A statue is raised to his memory in Oxford, and another, representing Priestley discovering oxygen, in Birmingham, England.

The articles of apparatus used by Priestley in his famous researches and discoveries were presented to the Smithsonian Institution in 1883, by his descendants, now living in Northumberland, Pennsylvania, where he spent the last ten years of his life.

Return to start of the East Hall of the National Museum in 1886