Discovered by : Scheele - Priestley
Discovered in year : 1772
Oxygen is a colourless, odourless, tasteless gaseous chemical element which appears in great abundance on Earth, trapped by the atmosphere. The atomic number of oxygen is eight, and it is identified by an O symbol on the periodic table of elements.Oxygen is also the third most abundant element in the universe. Joseph Priestley and Carl Wilhelm Scheele both independently discovered oxygen. Swedish pharmacist Carl Wilhelm Scheele produced oxygen gas by heating mercuric oxide and various nitrates by about 1772. Scheele called the gas 'Fire Air' because it was the only known supporter of combustion. He wrote an account of this discovery in a manuscript he titled 'Treatise on Air and Fire', which he sent to his publisher in 1775. However, that document was not published until 1777.
Joseph Priestley produced Oxygen gas on 1st August 1774 in the laboratory at Bowood House, Wiltshire, England. Priestley called the gas produced in his experiments 'Dephlogisticated Air. Priestley published his findings in 1775 in a paper titled 'An Account of Further Discoveries in Air' which was included in the second volume of his book titled 'Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air'. Because he published his findings first, Priestley is usually given priority in the discovery. He noted that candles burned brighter in the gas and that a mouse was more active and lived longer while breathing it. The name oxygen was coined in 1777 by Antoine Lavoisier, whose experiments with oxygen helped to discredit the then-popular phlogiston theory of combustion and corrosion
Development in Discovery of Oxygen
In 1805, Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac and Alexander von Humboldt showed that water is formed of two volumes of hydrogen and one volume of oxygen and by 1811 Amedeo Avogadro had arrived at the correct interpretation of water's composition, based on what is now called Avogadro's law and the assumption of diatomic elemental molecules
By the late 19th century scientists realized that air could be liquefied, and its components isolated, by compressing and cooling it. Swiss chemist and physicist Raoul Pierre Pictet and French physicist Louis Paul Cailletet proved it by their independent experiments. Oxygen was liquified in stable state for the first time on March 29, 1877 by Polish scientists from Jagiellonian University, Zygmunt Wróblewski and Karol Olszewski. In 1891 Scottish chemist James Dewar was able to produce enough liquid oxygen to study. The first commercially viable process for producing liquid oxygen was independently developed in 1895 by German engineer Carl von Linde and British engineer William Hampson.
Later, in 1901, oxyacetylene welding was demonstrated for the first time by burning a mixture of acetylene and compressed O2. In 1923 the American scientist Robert H. Goddard became the first person to develop a rocket engine. He successfully flew a small liquid-fuelled rocket on March 16, 1926 in Auburn, Massachusetts, USA.
Role of Oxygen in the Improvement Of Human Life
- Awareness of Oxygen provided the fact that it is a vital component of the respiration process and without oxygen, most organisms will die within minutes
- Discovery of Oxygen lead to it's various use in industries. Uses of oxygen include the production of steel, plastics and textiles, rocket propellant, oxygen therapy and life support in aircraft, submarines, space flight and diving.
- Oxygen also destroys the harmful bacteria in our bodies without affecting the beneficial bacteria that we need.
- Oxygen supplementation is used in medicine. Oxygen therapy is used to treat emphysema, pneumonia, some heart disorders, and any disease that impairs the body's ability to take up and use gaseous oxygen
