Later history oxygen

Later history
A metal frame structure stands on the snow near a tree. A middle-aged man wearing a coat, boots, leather gloves and a cap stands by the structure and holds it with his right hand.
Robert H. Goddard and a liquid oxygen-gasoline rocket
John Dalton’

s original atomic hypothesis presumed that all elements were monatomic and that the atoms in compounds would normally have the simplest atomic ratios with respect to one another. For example, Dalton assumed that water’s formula was HO, leading to the conclusi

on that the atomic mass of oxygen was 8 times that of hydrogen, instead of the modern value of about 16.[20] In 1805, Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac and Alexander von Humboldt showed that water is formed of two volumes of hydrogen and one volume of oxygen; and by 1811 Amedeo Avogadro had arrived at the correct interpretation of water’s composition, based on what is now called Avogadro’s law and the diatomic elemental molecules in those gases.[21][a]

By the late 19th century scientists realized that air could be liquefied and its components isolated by compressing and cooling it. Using a cascade method, Swiss chemist and physicist Raoul Pierre Pictet evaporated liquid sulfur dioxide in order to liquefy carbon dioxide, which in turn was evaporated to cool oxygen gas enough to liquefy it. He sent a telegram on December 22, 1877 to the French Academy of Sciences in Paris announcing his discovery of liquid oxygen.[22] Just two days la

ter, French physicist Louis Paul Cailletet announced his own method of liquefying molecular oxygen.[22] Only a few drops of the liquid were produced in each case and no meaningful analysis could be conducted. Oxygen was liquefied in a stable state for the first time on March 29, 1883 by Polish scientists from Jagiellonian University, Zygmunt Wróblewski and Karol Olszewski.[23]