The Bakerian Lecture. On the relations of electrical and chemical changes

Abstract

The author prefaces the experimental results and investigations in this lecture with a brief historical statement of the origin and progress of electro-chemical science, with a view to correct the erroneous statements which have appeared in this country and abroad. In this the first origin of this branch of knowledge is stated to be the discovery of the decomposition of water by the voltaic pile by Messrs. Nicholson and Carlisle in 1800. This was followed by the experiments of Cruickshank and of Dr. Henry, and by several papers by the author himself, the chief contents of which are stated, and in which the appearance of acids, oxygen, and azote at the positive, and of alkalies, sulphur, and metals, at the negative pole, is shown. The experiments of Hisinger and Berzelius in 1804 are placed next in order, which establish similar results; and in 1806, on the occasion of the agitation of the question respecting the formation of muriatic acid and fixed alkali from pure water, the author presented to this Society his Bakerian Lecture on the chemical agencies of electricity, in which he drew the general conclusion, that the combinations and decompositions by electricity were referrible to the law of electrical attractions and repulsions,—a theory in which, he observes, he has hitherto found nothing to alter, and which, after a lapse of twenty years, has continued, as it was in the beginning, the guide and foundation of all his researches.