Pneumatic Chemistry

the name for the chemistry of gases used around the turn of the 19th century. It has survived only as a historical term encompassing the early period of the chemical study of gases (from the first half of the 17th century to the end of the 18th century). In that period the law for the dependence of the volume of a gas on pressure was established by R. Boyle, and many gaseous elements and compounds were discovered and studied, among them carbon dioxide by J. Black; hydrogen by H. Cavendish; nitrogen by D. Rutherford; nitric oxide, carbon monoxide, and sulfur dioxide by J. Priestley; and oxygen, chlorine, and silicon fluoride by K. Scheele.