Chemical Identity Crisis: Glass and Glassblowing in the Identification of Organic Compounds (2015)
Jackson, Catherine M. (Author)
Annals of Science: The History of Science and Technology
Volume: 72, no. 2
Issue: 2
Pages: 187-205
This essay explains why and how nineteenth-century chemists sought to stabilize the melting and boiling points of organic substances as reliable characteristics of identity and purity and how, by the end of the century, they established these values as `Constants of Nature'. Melting and boiling points as characteristic values emerge from this study as products of laboratory standardization, developed by chemists in their struggle to classify, understand and control organic nature. A major argument here concerns the role played by the introduction of organic synthesis in driving these changes. Synthetic organic chemistry vastly increased the number of known organic substances, precipitating the chemical identity crisis of my title. Successful natural product synthesis, moreover, depended on chemists' ability to demonstrate the absolute identity of synthetic product and natural target -- something late nineteenth-century chemists eventually achieved by making reliable, replicable melting and boiling point measurements. In the period before the establishment of national standards laboratories, chemists and scientific glassblowers worked together to standardize melting and boiling points as physical constants, such collaborations highlighting the essential importance of chemical glassware and glassblowing skill in the development of nineteenth-century organic chemistry
...MoreArticle Ramberg, Peter J.; Nye, Mary Jo (2015) Introduction: Atomism and Organic Chemistry in Context: Essays in Honour of Alan J. Rocke. Annals of Science: The History of Science and Technology (pp. 149-152).
Similar Citations
Article
Kijan Espahangizi;
(2022)
Science in Glass: Material Pathologies in Laboratory Research, Glassware Standardization, and the (Un)Natural History of a Modern Material, 1900s–1930s
Article
Kijan Espahangizi;
(2015)
From Topos to Oikos: The Standardization of Glass Containers as Epistemic Boundaries in Modern Laboratory Research (1850–1900)
Article
Bigg, Charlotte;
(2003)
Spectroscopic Metrologies
Article
Pierre Laszlo;
(2015)
Tools for Chemists: The Desreux-Bischoff Viscosimeter
Book
Curtis, Rachel;
Leith, Catherine;
Nall, Joshua;
Jones, John;
(2008)
The Dyson Perrins Laboratory and Oxford Organic Chemistry 1916--2004
Chapter
Klein, Ursula;
(2004)
Chemical Technoscience in Eighteenth-Century Europe
Article
Martinón-Torres, Marcos;
(2012)
Inside Solomon's House: An Archaeological Study of the Old Ashmolean Chymical Laboratory in Oxford
Book
Öxler, Florian Karl;
(2010)
Vom tragbaren Labor zum Chemiebaukasten: zur Geschichte des Chemieexperimentierkastens unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des deutschsprachigen Raums
Chapter
Hartung, Gerald;
(2008)
The “Chymistry Laboratory”: On the Function of the Experiment in Seventeenth-Century Scientific Discourse
Article
Mendes Ferraz, Márcia H.;
(2006)
O Laboratório Químico da Casa da Moeda de Lisboa no Século XIX: Espaço Físico e Instrumentos
Article
Lea Leppik;
(2018)
Parrot’s Laboratory in the Borderland
Book
Lourenço, M. C.;
Carneiro, A.;
(2009)
Spaces and Collections in the History of Science: The Laboratorio Chimico Overture
Article
Linn, Mott;
(2004)
Photographs from 1892: Clark University's New Laboratories for Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry
Chapter
Martinón-Torres, Marcos;
(2007)
The Tools of the Chymist: Archaeological and Scientific Analyses of Early Modern Laboratories
Article
Viel, Claude;
(2009)
L'évolution du laboratoire et des instruments de chimie vue à travers des ouvragesà planches, du XVIIe à la fin de la première moitié du XIXe siècle
Book
Marco Beretta;
Paolo Brenni;
(2022)
The Arsenal of Eighteenth-Century Chemistry The Laboratories of Antoine Laurent Lavoisier
Book
Haustein, Heinz-Dieter;
(2001)
Weltchronik des Messens: Universalgeschichte von Maß und Zahl, Geld und Gewicht
Article
Staley, Richard;
(2003)
The Interferometer and the Spectroscope: Michelson's Standards and the Spectroscopic Community
Article
Ji, Yongliang;
(2008)
Zhang Wenshou's Contributions to Traditional Metrology
Book
Hartmut Petzold;
(2019)
Eine Berliner Waage im Münchner Deutschen Museum: Geschichte, Hintergründe und Aktualität eines Museumsobjekts. Deutsches Museum Studies Band 3
Acta Baltica historiae et philosophiae scientiarum
Ambix: Journal of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry
Bulletin for the History of Chemistry
Circumscribere: International Journal for the History of Science
Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
Be the first to comment!