Experiments and Observations Relating to Various Branches of Natural Philosophy

1779

London: [Printed] for J. Johnson

Joseph Priestley (1733-1804) combined his great achievements in pneumatic chemistry with passionate and unorthodox religious and political views. He was the probable discoverer of oxygen, although, determined to defend his phlogiston theory, he called it ‘dephlogisticated air’. He also showed that carbon dioxide (which he called ‘fixed air’) could be forced into water to make an artificial mineral drink – later commercially exploited by the Swiss amateur scientist Johann Schweppe (1740-1821). Priestley’s outspoken support of the French Revolution forced him to flee from his home in Birmingham to the United States where he spent his last ten years.