The life blood of existence on earth oxygen supports a number of applications but requires effective handling practices.
Oxygen, though discovered almost 250 years ago, still remains an invaluable contributor to the Industrial World. Its discovery is hotly disputed by historians, between Joseph Priestley, a British clergyman who first published his findings in 1774; a Swedish pharmacist Carl Scheele who claimed to have produced it in 1772 but did not publish until 1777, and a French chemist Antoine Lavoisier whose experimentation in 1774 was not published also until 1777.
The intrigue of this saga was compounded when a copy of a letter from Scheele to Lavoisier describing a ‘new substance’ was found in the former’s belongings when he died, which the latter had claimed he had not received!
But it is Lavoisier who first named the ‘new substance’ oxygen, (oxygene to be more precise in French) from oxys, which in Greek is ‘acid’, and genes, which means ‘producer’. Lavoisier wrongly assumed that oxygen was a constituent of all acids.
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