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Abstract
In his only known historical sketch addressing the origin of the chemical atomic theory, John Dalton stated that different atoms have different sizes, a conclusion which led him to an investigation of combining number of atoms and relative weights. Although he stated the idea occurred to him in 1805, his laboratory notes show he developed the first table of atomic weights in 1803. Historians over the years have provided conflicting narratives to explain the different dates. In this paper, I examine Dalton’s activities as a creative individual and a practicing chemist, arguing that Dalton’s concept of atomic size was not an “aha” moment occurring in 1805, but one that he used right from the start in 1803 to develop his chemical atomic theory. The concepts of atomic size and relative atomic weights emerged in 1803 from his investigations into caloric and the composition of nitric acid, respectively, not from his studies on gaseous solubility. In 1805, Dalton applied his 1803 concept of atomic size to explain a different problem, one of gaseous diffusion. Dalton’s 1805 epiphany should join the stage with other great insights in the history of science, such as those of Archimedes, Kekulé, and Poincaré.
Acknowledgements
I offer my sincere appreciation to the archivists and staff of the Memorial Library, University of Wisconsin–Madison; New York Public Library; Briarcliff Manor Public Library; Westchester Library System; and Uppsala University Library. I express my sincere appreciation to the two anonymous referees for their time in reviewing the manuscript and for the insightful comments that they provided.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Henry E. Roscoe and Arthur Harden, A New View of the Origin of Dalton’s Atomic Theory (London: Macmillan, 1896), 13–18, on 13. For a bibliography on Dalton, see A. L. Smyth, John Dalton 1766–1844: A Bibliography of Works by and about Him with an Annotated List of his Surviving Apparatus and Personal Effects (Manchester: Manchester Literary and Philosophical Publications, Ltd., 1997).
2 John Dalton, “Experimental Essays on the Constitution of Mixed Gases; on the Force of Steam or Vapour from Water and Other Liquids in Different Temperatures, both in a Torricellian Vacuum and in Air; on Evaporation; and on the Expansion of Gases by Heat,” Manchester Memoirs 5 (1802): 535–602.
3 Roscoe and Harden, New View, 26–29. Dalton’s laboratory notebooks were destroyed during World War II, and contemporary historians must view them through the eyes of those who came before – Henry Roscoe, Arthur Harden, and Andrew Meldrum. New View contains transcripts of his laboratory notes and some correspondence. Meldrum reviewed the notebooks in 1911; Andrew. N. Meldrum, “The Development of the Atomic Theory: (5) Dalton’s Chemical Theory,” Manchester Memoirs 55, no. 6 (1911): 1–18.
4 Roscoe and Harden, New View, 25; Leonard K. Nash, “The Origin of Dalton’s Chemical Atomic Theory,” Isis 47 (1956): 101–16; Arnold W. Thackray, “The Origins of Dalton’s Chemical Atomic Theory: Daltonian Doubts Resolved,” Isis 57 (1966): 35–55, on 44–45; Meldrum, “The Development of the Atomic Theory;” Theron Cole Jr., “Dalton, Mixed Gases, and the Origin of the Chemical Atomic Theory,” Ambix 25 (1978): 117–30, on 124–26; Henry Debus, “The Genesis of Dalton's Atomic Theory,” Philosophical Magazine 42 (1896): 350–68.
5 “Thus, the sudden insight in which a problem is solved, when it is solved suddenly, may represent only a minor nodal point, like the crest of a wave, in a long and very slow process – the development of a point of view.” Howard E. Gruber, Darwin on Man: A Psychological Study of Scientific Creativity, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 5; see also Howard E. Gruber, “On the Relation between ‘Aha Experiences’ and the Construction of Ideas,” History of Science 19 (1981): 41–59.
6 Mark I. Grossman, “John Dalton and the London Atomists: William and Bryan Higgins, William Austin, and New Daltonian Doubts About the Origin of the Atomic Theory,” Notes and Records 68 (2014): 339–56, on 346–51; and “John Dalton and the Origin of the Atomic Theory: Reassessing the Influence of Bryan Higgins,” British Journal for the History of Science 50 (2017): 657–76, on 669–72.
7 Cole, “Dalton, Mixed Gases, and the Origin of the Chemical Atomic Theory,” 124–6.
8 Dalton, “Experimental Essays on the Constitution of Mixed Gases,” 537, 541, 601, 602. John Dalton, “Letter from Mr Dalton, Containing Observations Concerning the Determination of Zero of Heat, the Thermometrical Gradation, and the Law by which Dense or Non-Elastic Fluids expand by Heat,” Journal of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, & the Arts 5 (1803): 34–6, on 35. For a discussion of Dalton’s spheres of influence as a visual and conceptual tool, see Gillian Gass, “Spheres of Influence: Illustration, Notation, and John Dalton’s Conceptual Toolbox, 1803–1835,” Annals of Science 64 (2007): 349–82.
9 Dalton, “Experimental Essays on the Constitution of Mixed Gases,” 540–1. Isaac Newton, The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, trans. I. Bernard Cohen and Anne Whitman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 697–9.
10 Dalton, “Experimental Essays on the Constitution of Mixed Gases,” 602. In 1802, Dalton defended his first law of mixed gases, beginning his discussion of the forces responsible for the repulsion of like particles by stating: “If I may explain by analogy, the most striking will be found in magnetism.” See John Dalton, “New Theory of the Constitution of Mixed Gases Elucidated. In a Letter from Mr. J. Dalton,” Journal of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, & the Arts 3 (1802): 267–71, on 268. John Dalton, A New System of Chemical Philosophy, part 1 (Manchester and London: S. Russell [for R. Bickerstaff], 1808), 157, 189.
11 John Dalton, Meteorological Observations and Essays (London: W. Richardson, 1793), 19.
12 Dalton, “Experimental Essays of the Constitution of Mixed Gases,” 601.
13 Hubert Frank Coward and Arthur Harden, “John Dalton’s Lectures and Lecture Illustrations: Part III. The Lecture Sheets Illustrating the Atomic Theory,” Manchester Memoirs (1915): 41–66, on 63. Coward and Harden commented that a similar diagram appeared in the notes to Dalton’s Birmingham lectures of 1817, but is undated and may have been used earlier by Dalton.
14 John Dalton, “New Theory of the Constitution of Mixed Gases Elucidated,” 268. Dalton’s statement was a response to Thomas Thomson’s criticism of his first law of mixed gases, contending that air was a chemical compound, not a mixture of gases.
15 Roscoe and Harden, New View, 27.
16 Roscoe and Harden, New View, 26.
17 Herbert T. Pratt, “A Letter Signed: The Very Beginnings of Dalton’s Atomic Theory,” Ambix 57 (2010): 301–10, on 303.
18 Roscoe and Harden, New View, 16.
19 The reference to Austin appears on the same page as Dalton’s first table of atomic weights, Roscoe and Harden, New View, 85. William Austin, “Experiments on the Formation of Volatile Alkali, and on the Affinities of the Phlogisticated and Light Inflammable Airs,” Philosophical Transactions 78 (1788): 379–87. For a discussion of Austin’s influence on Dalton, see Grossman, “John Dalton and the London Atomists,” 344–5.
20 Austin, “Experiments on the Formation of Volatile Alkali,” 382.
21 Meldrum, “The Development of the Atomic Theory,” 15–7.
22 Thackray, “The Origins of Dalton’s Chemical Atomic Theory,” 44–5.
23 Meldrum, “The Development of the Atomic Theory”, 15–6.
24 James R. Partington, A History of Chemistry, vol. 3 (London: Macmillan, 1962), 782.
25 Dalton, New System, part 1, 188.
26 Roscoe and Harden, New View, 27.
27 Austin, “Experiments on the Formation of Volatile Alkali,” 385–7.
28 Dalton illustrated this point in the Appendix to part 2 of New System, where he calculated the relative number of combining atoms for various elements, including nitrogen combining with hydrogen to form ammonia. John Dalton, A New System of Chemical Philosophy, part 2 (Manchester and London: Russell & Allen [for R. Bickerstaff], 1810), 560.
29 Roscoe and Harden, New View, 28, 85.
30 Roscoe and Harden, New View, 41–2.
31 Alan J. Rocke, “In Search of El Dorado: John Dalton and the Origins of the Atomic Theory,” Social Research 72 (2005): 125–58, on 127, 145.
32 Roscoe and Harden, New View, 25.
33 Thackray, “The Origins of Dalton’s Chemical Atomic Theory,” 37.
34 Nash, “The Origin of Dalton’s Chemical Atomic Theory,” 113.
35 Cole, “Dalton, Mixed Gases, and the Origin of the Chemical Atomic Theory,” 118–9.
36 Roscoe and Harden, New View, 27, 35.
37 Roscoe and Harden, New View, 35–7. Cole, “Dalton, Mixed Gases, and the Origin of the Chemical Atomic Theory,” 125–6. See also Alan J. Rocke, Chemical Atomism in the Nineteenth Century: From Dalton to Cannizzarro (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1984), 29–33.
38 Roscoe and Harden, New View, 37.
39 Henry Cavendish, “On the Conversion of a Mixture of Dephlogisticated and Phlogisticated Air into Nitrous Acid, by Electric Spark,” Philosophical Transactions 78 (1788): 261–76, on 270.
40 Cavendish, “On the Conversion of a Mixture of Dephlogisticated and Phlogisticated Air,” 270. See also Henry Cavendish, “Experiments on Air,” Philosophical Transactions 75 (1785): 372–84.
41 Roscoe and Harden, New View, 41. Theoretically Dalton could have just used Cavendish’s 220/100 ratio, but this seems unlikely, since this was Cavendish’s first trial and Davy viewed Gilpin’s result to be the most accurate of all three. Humphry Davy, Researches, Chemical and Philosophical; Chiefly Concerning Nitrous Oxide, or Dephlogisticated Nitrous Air, and its Respiration (London: J. Johnson, 1800), 2.
42 Dalton assumed that per Lavoisier, Cavendish had formed nitrous instead of nitric acid. If ten parts of nitrogen combined with thirty-nine parts of oxygen to form nitric acid, then assuming the formulas NO, NO2, and NO3, 20.5 parts of nitrogen would combine with 20.5/10 × 39 = 80 parts of oxygen. Lavoisier found 79.5 parts, which agreed with Dalton's calculated results.
43 Cole, “Dalton, Mixed Gases, and the Origin of the Chemical Atomic Theory,” 122–6. See also Rocke, Chemical Atomism in the Nineteenth Century, 29–33. Partington’s, Nash’s, and most recently Usselman’s et al. reconstructions of Dalton’s first experimental evidence of the law of multiple proportions, which he obtained on 4 August 1803, all concluded that Dalton was selectively seeking evidence of combination in multiple proportions, because the experimental results demonstrating the phenomena were difficult to obtain. J. R. Partington, “The Origins of the Atomic Theory,” Annals of Science 4 (1939): 245–82, on 279–82; Nash, “The Origin of Dalton’s Chemical Atomic Theory,” 105; and Melvin C. Usselman, Derek G. Leaist, and Katherine D. Watson, “Dalton’s Disputed Nitric Oxide Experiments and the Origins of his Atomic Theory,” ChemPhysChem 9 (2008): 106–10. Also see Melvin C. Usselman and Todd A. Brown, “Atomic Theory and Multiple Combining Proportions: The Search for Whole Number Ratios,” Annals of Science 72 (2015), 153–69, on 156–7; Melvin C. Usselman, “Multiple Combining Proportions: The Experimental Evidence,” in Instruments and Experimentation in the History of Chemistry, ed. Frederic L. Holmes and Trevor H. Levere (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000), 243–71, on 245–54. In 1802, Dalton stated “Two or more heterogeneous particles may unite and become a new centre for the caloric to adhere to.” Dalton, “New Theory of the Constitution of Mixed Gases Elucidated,” 271.
44 Roscoe and Harden noted that Dalton’s laboratory notebooks display very few illustrations of chemical equations, but they did cite one example, which shows how he visualised the combination of carbon with water. Roscoe and Harden, New View, 63.
45 Ursula Klein, “The Semiotics of Berzelian Chemical Formulas,” chap 1 in Experiments, Models, Paper Tools: Cultures of Organic Chemistry in the Nineteenth Century (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 9–40.
46 Cavendish, “On the Conversion of a Mixture of Dephlogisticated and Phlogisticated Air,” 270.
47 Dalton, New System, part 2, 320.
48 Davy, Researches, 2, 43. Dalton was thoroughly familiar with Researches. In 1811 he specifically mentioned Davy’s work on the nitrogen oxides as an early influence. John Dalton, “Observations on Dr. Bostock's Review of the Atomic Principles of Chemistry,” Journal of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, & the Arts 29 (1811): 143–51, on 144–5. Davy also believed that his Researches was an early influence on Dalton. June Fullmer, “Davy’s Sketches of His Contemporaries,” Chymia 12 (1967): 127–50, on 133. In 1802, Dalton cited the value for the specific gravity of oxygen that Davy reported in his Researches. John Dalton, “Experimental Enquiry into the Proportion of the Several Gases or Elastic Fluids, Constituting the Atmosphere,” Manchester Memoirs 6 (1805): 244–58, on 255. In 1803, Dalton referred to Davy’s work on the nitrogen oxides from Researches in various entries in his notebook and in his 1810 Royal Institution lectures. Roscoe and Harden, New View, 39, 43–4, 114–5. In addition, see Dalton, New System, part 2, 318–20, where he refers to Davy’s Researches.
49 Davy, Researches, 30–5.
50 Dalton, “New Theory of the Constitution of Mixed Gases Elucidated,” 268.
51 Cavendish, “On the Conversion of a Mixture of Dephlogisticated and Phlogisticated Air,” 270.
52 Antoine Lavoisier, Elements of Chemistry, trans. Robert Kerr (Dover: New York, 1965), 76, 216.
53 Roscoe Harden, New View, 28.
54 Cavendish, “On the Conversion of a Mixture of Dephlogisticated and Phlogisticated Air,” 270.
55 Davy, Researches, 2.
56 Roscoe and Harden, New View, 39–40.
57 Roscoe and Harden, New View, 40.
58 Roscoe and Harden, New View, 65.
59 Nash, “The Origin of Dalton’s Chemical Atomic Theory,” 116. Roscoe and Harden, New View, 57.
60 Meldrum, “The Development of the Atomic Theory,” 16–7.
61 Roscoe and Harden, New View, 64. Meldrum, “The Development of the Atomic Theory,” 16–7.
62 Thackray, “The Origins of Dalton’s Chemical Atomic Theory,” 45.
63 Another error which escaped Roscoe’s and Harden’s eyes appears in the transcription of page 247 of Dalton’s notebook. They state, “Ult. atom of oxygen [should therefore weigh] 1.42 oxygen” instead of 1.42 azote. Either Dalton wrote the entry incorrectly or the error is due to Roscoe and Harden or the printer. If Dalton was at fault, Roscoe and Harden did not place the notation (sic) next to the error, as they did with the spelling of gravities on page 246 of his notebook. Roscoe and Harden, New View, 27–8.
64 Thackray, “The Origins of Dalton’s Chemical Atomic Theory,” 45.
65 John Dalton, “Observations on Mr. Gough’s Two Letters on Mixed Gases,” Journal of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, & the Arts 9 (1804): 269–75.
66 John Dalton, “On the Absorption of Gases by Water and Other Liquids,” Manchester Memoirs 6 (1805): 271–87.
67 Thackray, “The Origins of Dalton’s Chemical Atomic Theory,” 45, 55.
68 Roscoe and Harden, New View, 65–6.
69 Frederick Lawrence Holmes, Investigative Pathways: Patterns and Stages in the Careers of Experimental Scientists (New Haven: Yale University Press), xvi–xvii.
70 Roscoe and Harden, New View, 16–7.
71 Debus also placed Dalton’s 1805 statement squarely within the context of gaseous diffusion. Debus, “The Genesis of Dalton’s Atomic Theory,” 357–8.
72 Holmes, Investigative Pathways, 16. Frederic L. Holmes, “Scientific Writing and Scientific Discovery,” Isis 78 (1987): 220–35.
73 William Henry to Alexander Marcet, 27 November 1805, Uppsala University Library, Waller Ms gb-00863, http://waller.ub.uu.se/19961.html (accessed on 6 July 2020), 2–3. For a discussion of this letter in the context of William Higgins’s priority claims, see Grossman, “John Dalton and the London Atomists,” 342–3.
74 Howard E. Gruber, “Insights and Affect in the History of Science,” in The Nature of Insight, ed. Robert J. Sternberg and Janet E. Davidson (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995), 397–431, on 405–6.
75 Dalton, New System, part 1, v.
76 Rocke, “In Search of El Dorado.”
77 Dalton, “Observations on Dr. Bostock’s Review of the Atomic Principles of Chemistry,”144–5.
78 William Charles Henry, Memoirs of the Life and Scientific Researches of John Dalton (London, Cavendish Society, 1854), 219–22.
79 Cole, “Dalton, Mixed Gases, and the Origin of the Chemical Atomic Theory,” 119–23. Rocke, Chemical Atomism in the Nineteenth Century, 37–8. In 1841, Dalton adopted the EVEN hypothesis, a position which undercut the basis of his second law of mixed gases. His action occurred late in life after two strokes, when he was somewhat bitter about having a paper rejected by the Royal Society. Perhaps his decision was influenced by impaired judgment or memory, or having a sense of his own mortality, perhaps he wanted to set the record straight about some of his past work. Regardless, this is another example of Dalton turning from one position to the other depending on his need – whatever that need was towards the end of his life. See Henry, Memoirs of the Life and Scientific Researches of John Dalton, 191–3.
80 Rocke, “In Search of El Dorado,” 142–9.
81 Alan Rocke, “Ideas in Chemistry: The Pure and the Impure,” Isis 109 (2018): 577–86, on 586. For additional detail on Kekulé, see Alan Rocke, Image & Reality: Kekulé, Kopp, and the Scientific Imagination (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010).
82 Frederick Lawrence Holmes, Lavoisier and the Chemistry of Life: An Exploration of Scientific Creativity (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 119–20; Holmes, Investigative Pathways, 175–6.
83 Howard E. Gruber and Doris B. Wallace, “The Case Study Method and Evolving Systems Approach for Understanding Unique Creative People at Work,” in Creativity, Psychology and the History of Science, ed. Howard E. Gruber and Katja Bödeker (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer, 2005), 39–63, on 55. Rocke has characterised Dalton during the fall of 1803 as “a resourceful scientist vigorously developing what he views as an important new theory, and having some significant success at the task.” Rocke, “In Search of El Dorado,” 142–8, on 145. As I have argued, Dalton’s table of atomic sizes was not one of those successes.
84 Henry, Memoirs of the Life and Scientific Researches of John Dalton, 210, 214–5, 219–22.
85 Gruber, “On the Relation between ‘Aha Experiences’ and the Construction of Ideas.” Rocke, Image & Reality, 186–227, 293–323. Holmes, Investigative Pathways, 172–88.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Mark I. Grossman
Mark Grossman is an independent researcher residing in Briarcliff Manor, NY. His research interests include the lives and works of William Higgins, Bryan Higgins, and John Dalton, and the history of meteoritics. Address: 28 Cypress Lane, Briarcliff Manor, NY 10510, USA. Email: [email protected]