‘Public’ Science: Hydrogen Balloons and Lavoisier's Decomposition of Water

Summary

The balloon mania between 1783 and 1785 put an extraordinary strain on the Paris Academy of Sciences, threatening its status as the highest tribunal of European science. Faced with repeated royal directives and public frenzy, the Academy manoeuvred carefully to steer the research toward the hydrogen balloon and thereby to maintain its scientific superiority. Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier seized this moment when the promise of ‘the empire of airs’ brought science to the centre of public attention to push his theoretical reform for chemistry. He utilized the established protocol of the Academy and the resources of the Republic of Letters to broadly publicize his first decomposition of water in April 1784. Once he attained the publicity and the balloon fever began to cool, he staged a much more elaborate experiment for the experts in February 1785. Although this second, large-scale experiment cost much expense and effort, Lavoisier never published a full account. The differential care given to the two experiments can only be understood in their divergent rhetorical contexts. The written accounts in 1784 addressed the court of public opinion, while the exclusive performance in 1785 aimed at the court of experts to inaugurate the collaborative phase of the Chemical Revolution.

I wish to thank Trevor Levere, Marie Thebaud-Sorger, and an anonymous referee, for their helpful comments, and Dr Dürr, for guiding me through the Lyons Academy Archive.

Notes

¹For a succinct chronology, see Mi Gyung Kim, Affinity, That Elusive Dream: A Genealogy of the Chemical Revolution (Cambridge, MA, 2003), 371–72.

²Sidney M. Edelstein, ‘Priestley settles the water controversy’, Chymia, 1 (1948), 123–36; Robert E. Schofield, ‘Still More on the Water Controversy’, Chymia, 9 (1964), 71–76.

³Maurice Daumas and Denis Duveen, ‘Lavoisier's Relatively Unknown Large-Scale Decomposition and Synthesis of Water, February 27 and 28, 1785’, Chymia, 5 (1959), 113–29 (116).

⁴Jan Golinski, ‘Precision Instruments and the Demonstrative Order of Proof in Lavoisier's Chemistry’, Osiris, 9 (1994), 30–47; idem. ‘“The Nicety of Experiment”: Precision of Measurement and Precision of Reasoning in Late Eighteenth-Century Chemistry’, in The Values of Precision, edited by M. Norton Wise (Princeton, NJ, 1995), 72–91.

⁵Kim (note 1), 372–89.

⁶Frederic Lawrence Holmes, Lavoisier and the Chemistry of Life: An Exploration of Scientific Creativity (Madison, 1984), 237–41.

⁷‘Développement des dernières expériences sur la décomposition et la recomposition de l'eau’, Journal Polytype des Sciences et des Arts, February 1786; reprinted in Oeuvres de Lavoisier, edited by J.B. Dumas and Edouard Grimaux, 6 vols. (Paris, 1864–1893), tome V, 320–34.

⁸Jean-Pierre Poirier, Lavoisier: Chemist, Biologist, Economist (Philadelphia, PA, 1996), 186.

⁹The classic account is Faujas de Saint-Fond, Description des Expériences de la Machine aérostatique de MM. de Montgolfier (Paris, 1783) and Premiere Suite de la Description des Expériences aérostatiques de MM. de Montgolfier (Paris, 1784); Recent historical studies are James Martin Hunn, The Balloon Craze in France, 1783–1799: A Study in Popular Science (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Vanderbilt University, 1982); Charles Coulston Gillispie, The Montgolfier Brothers and the Invention of Aviation, 1783–1784 (Princeton, NJ, 1983); Marie Thebaud-Sorger, ‘L'air du Temps’. L'aérostation: savoirs et pratiques à la fin du XVIIIe siècle (1783–1785) (Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Ecole des Hautes Etudes, 2004). As Dr Thebaud-Sorger points out, the identity of the ‘air’ in the balloon was still evolving at the time, although I employ the terms hot-air balloon and hydrogen balloon here for convenience.

¹⁰Vincenzo Ferrone, ‘The Man of Science’, in Enlightenment Portraits, edited by Michel Vovelle (Chicago, 1997), 190–225.

¹¹For the mobilization of animate and inanimate allies, see Bruno Latour, The Pasteurization of France (Cambridge, MA, 1988).

¹²Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes (Paris, 1686) and Digression sur les anciens et les modernes (Paris, 1688); Leonard M. Marsak, Introduction to The Achievement of Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle (New York, 1970); Charles B. Paul, Science and Immortality: The Eloges of the Paris Academy of Sciences (1699–1791) (Berkeley, CA, 1980); A. Niderst, Fontenelle (Paris, 1991); Aram Vartania n, Science and Humanism in the French Enlightenment (Charlottesville, VA, 1999), 5–44.

¹³Mary Terrall, The Man Who Flattened the Earth: Maupertuis and the Sciences in the Enlightenment (Chicago, 2002), esp. 154–60.

¹⁴Mary Terrall, ‘Gendered Spaces, Gendered Audiences: Inside and Outside the Paris Academy of Sciences’, Configurations, 3.2 (1995), 207–32; idem. ‘Metaphysics, Mathematics, and the Gendering of Science in Eighteenth-Century France’, in The Sciences in Enlightened Europe edited by William Clark, Jan Golinski, and Simon Schaffer (Chicago, 1999), 246–71.

¹⁵Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, 31–43; Anne Goldgar, Impolite Learning: Conduct and Community in the Republic of Letters, 1680–1750 (New Haven, CT, 1995).

¹⁶Geoffrey V. Sutton, Science for a Polite Society: Gender, Culture, and the Demonstration of Enlightenment (Boulder, CO, 1995).

¹⁷The exhibition of Vaucanson's automaton (the flute player) in 1738 charged three livres, equivalent to the weekly wage of a young ouvrière. They counted 7500 ticket sales; Reed Benhamou, ‘From Curiosité to Utilité: The Automaton in Eighteenth-Century France’, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, 17 (1987), 91–105.

¹⁸Robert M. Isherwood, Farce and Fantasy: Popular Entertainment in Eighteenth-Century Paris (Oxford, 1986), 49–55.

¹⁹Michael R. Lynn, ‘Enlightenment in the Public Sphere: The Musée de Monsieur and Scientific Culture in Late-Eighteenth-Century Paris’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 32 (1999), 463–76.

²⁰Julia Simon, Mass Enlightenment: Criticial Studies in Rousseau and Diderot (Albany, NY, 1995).

²¹Henry Guerlac, Lavoisier—The Crucial Year (Ithaca, NY, 1961); Holmes (note 6); Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, Lavoisier: Mémoires d'une révolution (Paris, 1994). For a distilled account, see Kim (note 1), 279–334.

²²Toby A. Appel, The Cuvier–Geoffroy Debate: French Biology in the Decades before Darwin (Oxford, 1987); Mi Gyung Kim, ‘Constructing Symbolic Spaces: Chemical Molecules in the Académie des Sciences’, Ambix, 43 (1996), 1–31; idem. ‘Lavoisier, the Father of Modern Chemistry?’ in Lavoisier in Perspective, edited by Marco Beretta (Munich, 2005), 167–91.

²³Marie Boas Hall, ‘The Royal Society's Role in the Diffusion of Information in the Seventeenth Century, ‘Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 29 (1974–1975), 173–92; Barrie Walters, ‘The Journal des savants and the Dissemination of News of English Scientific Activity in Late Seventeenth-Century France’, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 314 (1993), 133–66.

²⁴Sutton (note 16).

²⁵‘Premier Registre de la Société des gens de lettres, qui s'assemblent dans le Bibliothèque de M. Richard de Ruffey’, Ms. 1628, Bibliothèque municipale de Dijon, 14 and 28 February and 2 May 1753.

²⁶R.P.J. Galien, L'art de naviguer dans les airs. Amusement physique et géométrique, précédé d'un mémoire sur la Nature & la formation de la Grêle, dont il est une conséquence ultérieure, 2nd ed. (Avignon, 1757).

²⁷In England, these studies developed in tandom; Robert E. Schofield, The Lunar Society of Birmingham: A Social History of Provincial Science and Industry in Eighteenth-Century England (Oxford, 1963); idem. The Enlightenment of Joseph Priestley: A Study of His Life and Works from 1733 to1773 (University Park, PA, 1997); Christa Jungnickel, Cavendish: The Experimental Life (Cranbury, NJ, 1999); Jenny Uglow, The Lunar Men: Five Friends Whose Curiosity Changed the World (New York, 2002); Trevor Levere and Gerard L'E Turner eds. Discussing Chemistry and Steam: The Minutes of a Coffee House Philosophical Society, 1780–1787 (Oxford, 2002).

²⁸Guerlac, Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier: Chemist and Revolutionary (New York, 1975).

²⁹For a brief analysis of the content, see Kim (note 1), 315–21.

³⁰ Oeuvres de Lavoisier (note 7), tome VII, fascicule II, 404–42. Patrice Bret, ‘Power, Sociability and Dissemination of Science: Lavoisier and the Learned Societies’, Lavoisier in Perspective edited by Marco Beretta (Deutsches Museum, 2005), 129–52.

³¹Lavoisier to Bucquet, 28 January 1775 in Oeuvres de Lavoisieri (note 7), tome VII, fascicule II, 471.

³²C.E. Perrin, ‘The Lavoisier–Bucquet Collaboration: A Conjecture’, Ambix, 36 (1989), 5–40; E. McDonald, ‘The Collaboration of Bucquet and Lavoisier’, Ambix, 13 (1966), 74–83.

³³For example, see Lavoisier's invitation to Benjamin Franklin, 8 June 1777, in Oeuvres de Lavoisier (note 7), tome VII, facsicule III, 601.

³⁴W.A. Smeaton, ‘Guyton de Morveau's Course of Chemistry in the Dijon Academy’, Ambix, 9 (1961), 53–69; Guyton de Morveau, L.B. Hughes Maret, and J.F. Durande, Elémens de chymie, théorique et pratique, rédigés dans un nouvel ordre, d'après les découvertes modernes, 3 vols. (Dijon, 1777–1778).

³⁵ Expériences et observations sur différentes espèces d'air, translated by Gibelin, 5 vols. (Paris, 1777–1780).

³⁶Emeric David, ‘Mon Voyage de 1787’, Ms. 5947, Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal; discussed in Leonard N. Rosenband, Papermaking in Eighteenth-Century F rance: Management, Labor, and Revolution at the Montgolfier Mill, 1761–1805 (Baltimore, MD, 2000), 26.

³⁷For the geographical distribution of Montgolfier paper products, see Rosenband (note 36), 28. For the transactions with Beaumarchais, see the two letters from Etienne Montgolfier to Beaumarchais during 1781–1782; Tissandier Collection, Box 7, Library of Congress.

³⁸François Fosca, Histoire des cafés de Paris (Paris, 1935), 19.

³⁹M.P.L. Duret, ‘Notice sur Joseph Montgolfier’, Musée de l'air, Montgolfier papers [Hereafter cited as MA] I.1; discussed in Gillispie (note 9), 10–15.

⁴⁰This paragraph is based on Peter Jackson Austerfield, The Development of Large-Scale Production and Utilisation of Lighter-than-Air Gases in France, Britain and the Low Countries from 1783 to 1821, With Special Reference to Aeronautics and the Coal-Gas Industry (Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University College London, 1981), 24–34.

⁴¹Although Homberg is a rather obscure figure in the historiography, he played a crucial role in shaping the Academy's chemical programme at the beginning of the century. His work inspired Lavoisier and Richard Kirwan, one of the leading philosophical chemists of the 1780s; Kim (note 1), 65–110, 303–11, and 268–77.

⁴²M.P.L. Duret, ‘Notice manuscrite sur Etienne Montgolfier’, MA I.2.

⁴³Joseph Montgolfier, ‘Mémoire lu à l'académie de Lyon’, in Faujas, Premiere Suite (note 9), 98–111, 100–101.

⁴⁴Gillispie (note 9), 15–17 and 21–24.

⁴⁵Etienne Montgolfier to Desmarest, 16 December 1782, reproduced in Comte de la Vaulx et Paul Tissandier, Joseph et Étienne de Montgolfier (Annonay, 1926), Planche VI and 26–27; For a summary in English, see Gillispie (note 9), 21–22.

⁴⁶‘Extrait des délibérations des Etats particuliers du pays de Vivarais du Jeudi Matin 5 Juin 1783’, Planches XVI–XVII in la Vaux et Tissandier (note 45).

⁴⁷ ‘Extrait des délibérations des Etats particuliers du pays de Vivarais du Jeudi Matin 5 Juin 1783’, Planches XVI–XVII in la Vaux et Tissandier (note 45). Planche XXI.

⁴⁸A report by Condorcet, Academy Dossier 19 July 1783.

⁴⁹ Journal de Paris, 27 July 1783.

⁵⁰Thomas M. Kavanagh, Esthetics of the Moment: Literature and Art in the French Enlightenment (Philadelphia, PA, 1996).

⁵¹ Journal de Paris, 28 August 1783.

⁵²Lynn (note 19); Christine Pevitt, The Man Who Would be King: The Life of Philippe d'Orléans, Regent of France (New York, 1997); Amédée Britsch, La maison d'Orléans à la fin de l'ancien régime. La jeunesse de Philippe Egalité (1747–1785) d'après des documents inédits (Paris, 1926).

⁵³Tom D. Crouch, The Eagle Aloft: Two Centuries of the Balloon in America (Washington, DC, 1983), 13.

⁵⁴Isherwood (note 18); Thomas E. Crow, Painters and Public Life in Eighteenth-Century France (Yale, CT, 1985).

⁵⁵ Mémoires secrets pour servir à l'histoire de la République des lettres en France, depuis MDCCLXII jusqu’à nos jours; ou Journal d'un observateur, contenant les Analyses des Pieces de Théâtre qui ont poru durant cet intervalle; les Relations des Assemblées Littéraires; les notices des Livres nouveaux, clandestins, prohibés; les Pieces fugitives, rares ou manuscrits, en prose ou en vers; les Vaudevilles sur la Cour; les Anecdotes & Bons Mots; les Eloges des Savans, des Artistes, des Hommes de Letres morts, &c.&c.&c [commonly attributed to Bachaumont; Hereafter cited as Mémoires secrets], 8 August 1783.

⁵⁶ Mercure de France, 20 September 1783 (Journal politiq de Bruxelles, 16 September), 120.

⁵⁷ Journal de Paris, 28 August 1783.

⁵⁸Franklin to Richard Price, 16 September 1783 in The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, edited by Albert Henry Smyth (New York, 1907) [Hereafter cited as The Writings], vol. 9, 99.

⁵⁹ Journal de Paris, 11 and 12 September 1783.

⁶⁰Franklin to R. Price, 16 September 1783, in The Writings (note 58), vol. 9, 85.

⁶¹ Journal de Paris, 11 and 12 September 1783.

⁶²Lavoisier, ‘Mémoire dans lequel on a pour objet de prouver que l'eau n'est point une substance simple’, Oeuvres de Lavoisier (note 7), tome II, 334–59.

⁶³Monge was following Volta's earlier experiment which effected combustion of inflammable air and dephlogisticated air with an electric spark; C.E. Perrin, ‘Lavoisier, Monge, and the Synthesis of Water: A Case of Pure Coincidence?’ British Journal for the History of Science, 6 (1973), 424–28.

⁶⁴ Mémoires secrets (note 55), 9 September 1783.

⁶⁵Franklin to Banks, 30 August 1783 in The Writings (note 58), vol. 9, 82.

⁶⁶Franklin to Banks, 8 October 1783 in The Writings (note 58), vol. 9, 106.

⁶⁷See the letter from Lavoisier to Montgolfier, 14 September 1783, in Oeuvres de Lavoisier (note 7), tome VII, Facsicule III, p. 743. For the central role Meusnier played in aeronautic engineering, see Gillispie (note 9), 98–118.

⁶⁸Rochefoucauld to Lavoisier, 20 September 1783 in Oeuvres de Lavoisier (note 7), tome VII, facsicule III, 745–46.

⁶⁹Lavoisier to Rochefoucauld, 25 September 1783, Oeuvres de Lavoisier (note 7), tome VII, Facsicule III, 736–40.

⁷⁰‘Lettre ecrite de S. Pétersbourg, par M. Rome, à M. Sage, de l'Académie Royale des Sciences, Oct. 4th 1783’ in Faujas, Description (note 9), 189–90.

⁷¹Benjamin Franklin to Joseph Banks, October 8 1783 in The Writings (note 58), vol. 9, 106.

⁷² Benjamin Franklin to Joseph Banks, October 8 1783 in The Writings (note 58), 81, 83, 105–106, and 115.

⁷³Austerfield (note 41), 43–54 and 71–109; Marie Thebaud-Sorger, ‘L'air chaud et l'hydrogène, les dessous in soupçonnés d'un débat scientifique’, Enquête des cahiers de sciences et vie, 63 (2001), 26–34.

⁷⁴‘Rapport fait à l'Académie des Sciences sur la machine aérostatique’, Histoire de l'Académie royale des sciences, 1783, 1–25; reprinted in Oeuvres de Lavoisier (note 7), tome III, 719–35.

⁷⁵‘Extrait d'un mémoire lÛ par M. lavoisier à la séance publique de l'Académie royale des sciences, du 12 novembre, sur la nature de l'eau’, Observations sur la physique, 23 (1783), 452–55 (455).

⁷⁶ Mémoires secrets (note 55), 12 October 1783.

⁷⁷Faujas, Premiere Suite (note 9), 98–111.

⁷⁸‘Lettre à M. l'Abbé de Fontenai’, Journal de France, 10 December 1783.

⁸³L-S Mercier, ‘Le premier décembre’, Le Tableau de Paris, 2, 886–89. Translated in Panorama of Paris, edited by J.D. Popkin (University Park, PA, 1999), 196. The word ‘physics’ [la physique] in the eighteenth century did not refer to our modern discipline of physics, but retained the Aristotelian sense of ‘physics’ which encompassed most branches of knowledge about nature acquired in systematic, causal studies. Some major demarcations were taking hold, however, usually leaving chemistry and natural history outside the boundary of the all-encompassing category of ‘physics’. Likewise, the ‘physicist’ [physicien] did not refer to a specialist in physics, although the most widely recognized type of physicien in public culture was associated with the practice of experimental physics such as electricity. The contemporaries often translated French la physique and physicien as ‘natural philosophy’ and ‘(natural) philosopher’.

⁷⁹‘Lettre sur le Globe aérostatique’, Journal de Monsieur, 6 (1783), 57–72, 57.

⁸⁰ Oeuvres de Lavoisier (note 7), tome III, 740, dated 23 November by Daumas, but 23 December 1783 by Hunn (note 9), 323. If Hunn is right, Lavoisier would have been less prophetic than pensive about the balloon mania. In either case, he must have been worried throughout December as the balloon craze intensified.

⁸¹Faujas, Premire Suite (note 9), 48–55; Quite valuable are a manuscript account of the day-to-day operations by one of the ouvriers (Tissandier Collection, Library of Congress, Box 3) and Charles, ‘Sécond Mémoire’, Ms. 2104, Bibliothèque de l'Institut de France. Also, see the secondary sources in note 9.

⁸²Gaston Tissandier, Histoire des Ballons et des Aéronauts célèbres (Paris, 1887), 48.

⁸⁴ Journal de Paris, 9 December 1783.

⁸⁵ Mémoires secrets (note 55), 9 December 1783.

⁸⁶Charles, ‘Second Mémoire’, Ms. 2104, Bibliothèque de l'Institut; discussed in Hunn (note 9), 313.

⁸⁷Meusnier, ‘Mémoire sur l’équilibre des machines aérostatiques, sur les différens moyens de les faire monter & descendre, & spécialement sur celui d'exécuter ces manoeuvres, sans jeter de lest, & sans perdre d'air inflammable, en ménageant dans le ballon une capacité particulière, déstinée à renfermer de l'air atmosphérique’, Observations sur la physique, 25 (July 1784), 39–69; discussed in Hunn (note 9), 336–37 and Gillispie (note 9), 100–103.

⁸⁸ Journal de Paris, 2 December 1783 and ‘Calcul des différentes élévations auxquelles a dÛ parvenir le Globe Aérostatique de vint-six pieds, lancé du Jardin des Tuileries, le premier Décembre 1783, d'après la seule considération des poids que cette Machine a portés’, Journal de Paris, 25 December 1783.

⁸⁹ Journal encyclopédique, Fevrier 1784, 483–88.

⁹⁰Stephen Hilgartner, Science on Stage: Expert Advice as Public Drama (Stanford, CA, 2002).

⁹¹Xavier de Maistre, Prospectus de l'expérience aérostatique de Chambéry (Chambéry, 1784), 10–11 and Simon-Nicolas-Henri Linguet, Annales politiques, civiles et littéraires, vol. 11 (London, 1784), 28; both cited in Hunn (note 9), 308–309. On the heyday of opposition journalism in the early 1770s, brief see Nina R. Gelbart, ‘ Frondeur journalism in the 1770s: Theater Criticism and Radical Politics in the Prerevolutionary French Press’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 17 (1984), 493–514.

⁹²Kim (note 1), 240–46.

⁹³Comte de Milly, ‘Observations sur les expériences de MM. de Montgolfier, Robert & Charles, avec les moyens de les rendre plus aisées & moins dangereuses’, Faujas, Premiere Suite (note 9), 301–14.

⁹⁴Academy Dossier, Dec. 6 1783.

⁹⁵Holmes (note 6), 237–90.

⁹⁶ Holmes (note 6). 201–202.

⁹⁷In 1783, Buffon received 3,587 livres, while payments to other academicians ranged from 300 to 1,000 livres, totalling about 12,457 livres. (Dépense, année 1783, Archive de l'Academie des sciences)

⁹⁸ Procès-verbaux, Académie royale des Sciences, 12 December 1783.

⁹⁹ Procès-verbaux, Académie royale des Sciences, 20 December 1783. This promise seems to have been followed through; Thebaud-Sorger (note 9), 547.

¹⁰⁰ Journal de Paris, 23 December 1783. The machine supplied water to the establishment, as well as serving a decorative purpose.

¹⁰¹ Mercure de France, 20 December 1783.

¹⁰²La Vaux et Tissandier (note 45), 44–45; Even Joseph, who did not care much for all the congratulations showered upon him, was happy about the honour accorded to his father; Joseph to Etienne, 18 December 1783, ibid. 53–55.

¹⁰³ Gazette de France, 9 December 1783 ; Memoires secrets, 22 December 1783.

¹⁰⁴ Mercure de France, 20 December 1783.

¹⁰⁵ Gazette de France, 16 December 1783.

¹⁰⁶ Mercure de France, 27 December 1783; ‘Inscription proposé pour la Pyramide projetté à la gloire de MM. Charles & Robert’, Journal de Paris, 3 January 1784.

¹⁰⁷Academy Dossier, 10 December 1783.

¹⁰⁸Ms. 233, Académie des sciences et belle lettre de Lyon; discussed in Hunn (note9), 337–74.

¹⁰⁹Austerfield (note 40).

¹¹⁰ Journal de Paris, 28 January 1784.

¹¹¹ Histoire (1783), 5–23, 21–22: see the summary in Gillispie (note 9), 67.

¹¹²‘Reflexions sur les points principaux qui doivent occuper les commissaires nommés pour les machine aérostatiques’, Oeuvres de Lavoisier (note 7), tome II, 741–44.

¹¹³Daumas and Duveen (note 3), 116. Lavoisier to Fourcroy de Ramecourt, 1 May 1784, Oeuvres de Lavoisier (note 7), tome VII, Facsicule IV, 18–19; Procès-Verbaux (note 99), 19 May 1784.

¹¹⁴Augustin Darquir, an astronomer at Toulouse and a corresponding member of the Academy, asked on behalf of his nephew baron de Puymaurin for a less expensive means of producing hydrogen: Darquier to Lavoisier, 8 January 1784; Chapelain of the Swedish ambassador in Paris Frédéric Charles de Baër requested an urgent reply on behalf of the Swedish Academy: Bäer to Lavoisier, 12 February 1784; Oeuvres de Lavoisier (note 7), tome VII, facsicule IV. 1–2 and 8–9.

¹¹⁵For Meusnier's involvement in the balloons, see Gillispie (note 9), 31–33; ‘Lettre à M. Faujas de Saint-Fond, par M. Meusnier’, in Faujas, Description (note 9), 49–162; Gaston Darboux, ‘Notice historique sur le Général Meusnier’, Memoires de l'Académie royal des sciences [Hereafter cited as Mémoires], [2] 51 (1910), i–xxxviii, and Meusnier's writings in the same volume, 3–128.

¹¹⁶Monge, ‘Mémoire sur le résultat de l'inflammation du Gaz inflammable & de l'Air dephlogistiqué, dans de vaisseaux clos’, Mémoires (note 115), 1783, 78–88 [presented on 17 December].

¹¹⁷A.L. Lavoisier and J.B. Meusnier, ‘Mémoire o[ugrave] l'on prouve par la décomposition de l'Eau, que ce Fluide n'est point une substance simple, & qu'il y a plusieurs moyens d'obtenir en grand l'Air inflammable qui y entre comme principe constituant’, Mémoires (note 115), 1781 (pub. 1784), 269–82, 270–71; reprinted in Oeuvres de Lavoisier (note 7), tome II, 360–73.

¹¹⁸ Journal de Paris, 30 April 1784; Mémoires secrets (note 55), 25 April 1784

¹¹⁹Kim (note 1), 279–329.

¹²⁰Denis L. Duveen and Herbert S. Klickstein, ‘A Letter from Berthollet to Blagden Relating to the Experiments for a Large-Scale Synthesis of Water Carried Out by Lavoisier and Meusnier in 1785’, Annals of Science, 10 (1954), 58–62.

¹²¹Robert Darnton, Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France (Cambridge, MA, 1968); Charles C. Gillispie, Science and Polity in France: The End of the Old Regime (Princeton, 1980), 261–89.

¹²²This paragraph is based on Hunn (note 9), 329–63. Also, see Meusnier (note 87).

¹²³‘Remarques de Lavoisier’, Oeuvres de Lavoisier, vol. 3, 508–510. On the importance of screening out imagination, Jessica Riskin, Science in the Age of Sensibility: The Sentimental Empiricists of the French Enlightenment (Chicago, 2002), 189–225.

¹²⁴Dumas and Duveen (note 3), 117–18; Their account is based on a detailed note kept by Meusnier, in addition to Lavoisier's laboratory notebook X.

¹²⁵On the November 1784 report, also see Gillispie (note 9), 106–18.

¹²⁶For a detailed description of the experiment, Maurice Daumas, Lavoisier Théoricien et expérimentateur (Paris, 1955), Chapter VI.

¹²⁷Holmes (note 6), 237–238.

¹²⁸Golinski (note 4).

¹²⁹Kim (note 1), 370–72 and 379–83.

¹³⁰Kim (note 1), 375–89 and 408–11.

¹³¹Nina Gelbart (note 91).

¹³²Colin Jones, ‘The Great Chain of Buying: Medical Advertisement, the Bourgeois Public Sphere, and the Origins of the French Revolution’, American Historical Review, 101 (1996), 13–40.

¹³³De Morveau, Chaussier & Bertrand, Description de l'Aérostate L'Académie de Dijon, contenant le détail des procédés, la théorie des opérations, les dessins des machines & les procès-verbaux d'expériences (Dijon, 1784), 46.

¹³⁴F.L. Holmes, Anoine Lavoisier—The Next Crucial Year (Princeton, NJ, 1998).

¹³⁵Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life (Princeton, 1985); Steven Shapin, ‘The House of Experiment in Seventeenth-Century England’, Isis, 79 (1988), 373–404; Jan Golinski, Science as Public Culture: Chemistry and Enlightenment in Britain, 1760–1820 (New York, 1992).

¹³⁶On the performative dimension of expert culture, Kim (note 22); Hilgartner (note 90).