History of Chemistry

The history of chemistry represents a time span from ancient history to the present. By 1000 BC, civilizations used technologies that would eventually form the basis of the various branches of chemistry. Examples include the discovery of fire, extracting metals from ores, making pottery and glazes, fermenting beer and wine, extracting chemicals from plants for medicine and perfume, rendering fat into soap, making glass,
and making alloys like bronze.

The protoscience of chemistry, and alchemy, was unsuccessful in explaining the nature of matter and its transformations. However, by performing experiments and recording the results, alchemists set the stage for modern chemistry.

The history of chemistry is intertwined with the history of thermodynamics, especially through the work of Willard Gibbs.

Ancient history

Early humans

Fire

Arguably the first chemical reaction used in a controlled manner was fire. However, for millennia fire was seen simply as a mystical force that could transform one substance into another (burning wood, or boiling water) while producing heat and light. Fire affected many aspects of early societies. These ranged from the simplest facets of everyday life, such as cooking and habitat heating and lighting, to more advanced uses, such as making pottery and bricks and melting of metals to make tools. It was fire that led to the discovery of glass and the purification of metals; this was followed by the rise of metallurgy.

Paint

A 100,000-year-old ochre-processing workshop was found at Blombos Cave in South Africa. It indicates that early humans had an elementary knowledge of mineral processing. Paintings drawn by early humans consisting of early humans mixing animal blood with other liquids found on cave walls also indicate a small knowledge of chemistry.

Early metallurgy

The earliest recorded metal employed by humans seems to be gold, which can be found free or "native". Small amounts of natural gold have been found in Spanish caves used during the late Paleolithic period, around 40,000 BC. The earliest gold metallurgy is known from the Varna culture in Bulgaria, dating from c. 4600 BC.

Silver, copper, tin and meteoric iron can also be found native, allowing a limited amount of metalworking in ancient cultures.Photos, E., 'The Question of Meteorictic versus Smelted Nickel-Rich Iron: Archaeological Evidence and Experimental Results' ''World Archaeology'' Vol. 20, No. 3, Archaeometallurgy (February 1989), pp. 403–421
Online version
accessed on 2010-02-08. Egyptian weapons made from meteoric iron in about 3000 BC were highly prized as "daggers from Heaven".W. Keller (1963) ''The Bible as History'', p. 156

During the early stages of metallurgy, methods of purification of metals were sought, and gold, known in ancient Egypt as early as 2900 BC, became a precious metal.

Bronze Age

Tin, lead, and copper smelting

Certain metals can be recovered from their ores by simply heating the rocks in a fire: notably tin, lead and (at a higher temperature) copper. This process is known as smelting. The first evidence of this extractive metallurgy dates from the 6th and 5th millennia BC, and was found in the archaeological sites of the Vinča culture, Majdanpek, Jarmovac and Pločnik in Serbia. The earliest copper smelting is found at the Belovode site; these examples include a copper axe from 5500 BC. Other signs of early metals are found from the third millennium BC in places like Palmela (Portugal), Los Millares (Spain), and Stonehenge (United Kingdom). However, as often happens in the study of prehistoric times, the ultimate beginnings cannot be clearly defined and new discoveries are ongoing.

Bronze

These first metals were single elements, or else combinations as naturally occurred. By combining copper and tin, a superior metal could be made, an alloy called bronze. This was a major technological shift that began the Bronze Age about 3500 BC. The Bronze Age was a period in human cultural development when the most advanced metalworking (at least in systematic and widespread use) included techniques for smelting copper and tin from naturally occurring outcroppings of copper ores, and then smelting those ores to cast bronze. These naturally occurring ores typically included arsenic as a common impurity. Copper/tin ores are rare, as reflected in the absence of tin bronzes in western Asia before 3000 BC.

After the Bronze Age, the history of metallurgy was marked by armies seeking better weaponry. States in Eurasia prospered when they made the superior alloys, which, in turn, made better armor and better weapons.

The Chinese are credited with the first ever use of Chromium to prevent rusting. Modern archaeologists discovered that bronze-tipped crossbow bolts at the tomb of Qin Shi Huang showed no sign of corrosion after more than 2,000 years, because they had been coated in chromium. Chromium was not used anywhere else until the experiments of French pharmacist and chemist Louis Nicolas Vauquelin (1763–1829) in the late 1790s.In multiple Warring States period tombs, sharp swords and other weapons were also found to be coated with 10 to 15 micrometers of chromium oxide, which left them in pristine condition to this day.

Significant progress in metallurgy and alchemy was also made in ancient India.

Iron Age

Ferrous metallurgy

The extraction of iron from its ore into a workable metal is much more difficult than copper or tin. While iron is not better suited for tools than bronze (until steel was discovered), iron ore is much more abundant and common than either copper or tin, and therefore more often available locally, with no need to trade for it.

Iron working appears to have been invented by the Hittites in about 1200 BC, beginning the Iron Age. The secret of extracting and working iron was a key factor in the success of the Philistines.

Cast iron smithing as well as the innovation of the Blast Furnace and Cupola furnace was invented in ancient China, during the Warring States period when armies sought to develop better weaponry and armor in state-armories. Many other applications, practices, and devices associated with or involved in metallurgy were also established in ancient China, with the innovations of hydraulic-powered trip hammers, and double-acting piston bellows.Temple, Robert K.G. (2007). ''The Genius of China: 3,000 Years of Science, Discovery, and Invention'' (3rd edition). London: André Deutsch. pp. 44–56. .

The Iron Age is named after the advent of iron working ( ferrous metallurgy). Historical developments in ferrous metallurgy can be found in a wide variety of past cultures and civilizations. These include the ancient and medieval kingdoms and empires of the Middle East and Near East, ancient Iran, ancient Egypt, ancient Nubia, and Anatolia (Turkey), Ancient Nok, Carthage, the Greeks and Romans of ancient Europe, medieval Europe, ancient and medieval China, ancient and medieval India, ancient and medieval Japan, amongst others.

Classical antiquity and atomism

Philosophical attempts to rationalize why different substances have different properties (color, density, smell), exist in different states (gaseous, liquid, and solid), and react in a different manner when exposed to environments, for example to water or fire or temperature changes, led ancient philosophers to postulate the first theories on nature and chemistry. The history of such philosophical theories that relate to chemistry can probably be traced back to every single ancient civilization. The common aspect in all these theories was the attempt to identify a small number of primary classical elements that make up all the various substances in nature. Substances like air, water, and soil/earth, energy forms, such as fire and light, and more abstract concepts such as thoughts, aether, and heaven, were common in ancient civilizations even in the absence of any cross-fertilization: for example ancient Greek, Indian, Mayan, and Chinese philosophies all considered air, water, earth and fire as primary elements.

Ancient world

Around 420 BC, Empedocles stated that all matter is made up of four elemental substances: earth, fire, air and water. The early theory of atomism can be traced back to ancient Greece. Greek atomism was made popular by the Greek philosopher Democritus, who declared that matter is composed of indivisible and indestructible particles called "atomos" around 380 BC. Earlier, Leucippus also declared that atoms were the most indivisible part of matter. This coincided with a similar declaration by the Indian philosopher Kanada in his Vaisheshika sutras around the same time period.Will Durant (1935), ''Our Oriental Heritage'':

Aristotle opposed the existence of atoms in 330 BC. A Greek text attributed to Polybus the physician (ca. 380 BC) argued that the human body is composed of four humours instead. Epicurus (fl. 300 BC) postulated a universe of indestructible atoms in which man himself is responsible for achieving a balanced life.

With the goal of explaining Epicurean philosophy to a Roman audience, the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius wrote ''De rerum natura'' (On the Nature of Things) in the middle of the first century BC. In the work, Lucretius presents the principles of atomism; the nature of the mind and soul; explanations of sensation and thought; the development of the world and its phenomena; and explains a variety of celestial and terrestrial phenomena.

The earliest alchemists in the Western tradition seemed to have come from Greco-Roman Egypt in the first centuries AD. In addition to technical work, many of them invented chemical apparatuses. The ''bain-marie'', or water bath, is named for Mary the Jewess. Her work also gives the first descriptions of the ''tribikos'' and ''kerotakis''. Cleopatra the Alchemist described furnaces and has been credited with the invention of the alembic. Later, Zosimos of Panopolis wrote books on alchemy, which he called ''cheirokmeta'', the Greek word for "things made by hand." These works include many references to recipes and procedures, as well as descriptions of instruments. Much of the early development of purification methods were described earlier by Pliny the Elder in his Naturalis Historia. He tried to explain those methods, as well as making acute observations of the state of many minerals.

Medieval alchemy

The elemental system used in medieval alchemy was developed primarily by Jābir ibn Hayyān and was rooted in the classical elements of Greek tradition. His system consisted of the four Aristotelian elements of air, earth, fire, and water in addition to two philosophical elements: sulphur, characterizing the principle of combustibility, "the stone which burns"; and mercury, characterizing the principle of metallic properties. They were seen by early alchemists as idealized expressions of irreducible components of the universe and are of larger consideration within philosophical alchemy.

The three metallic principles (sulphur to flammability or combustion, mercury to volatility and stability, and salt to solidity) became the ''tria prima'' of the Swiss alchemist Paracelsus. He reasoned that Aristotle's four-element theory appeared in bodies as three principles. Paracelsus saw these principles as fundamental and justified them by recourse to the description of how wood burns in fire. Mercury included the cohesive principle, so that when it left the wood (in smoke) the wood fell apart. Smoke described the volatility (the mercurial principle), the heat-giving flames described flammability (sulphur), and the remnant ash described solidity (salt).

The philosopher's stone

Alchemy is defined by the Hermetic quest for the philosopher's stone, the study of which is steeped in symbolic mysticism, and differs greatly from modern science. Alchemists toiled to make transformations on an esoteric (spiritual) and/or exoteric