fk-0219-a-b-2-prints-framed-and-1-letter-framed — Teylers Museum

1790 - 1791

This imaginative assembly of tubes, pipes and bottles is a combustion apparatus. It is part of the set of instruments developed by the first director of Teylers Museum, Martinus van Marum, between 1790 and 1794 to study and demonstrate the combustion theories of the French chemist Antoine Lavoisier. Until that time it was generally assumed that burning substances released the so-called flogiston, making the burned substances lighter. Lavoisier on the other hand, assumed that substances, when combusted, absorb a substance: oxygen. He showed that the total mass of all substances involved in combustion stays the same. Lavoisier also showed that water is not a simple substance, but is composed of oxygen and hydrogen. This theory could be proven with this apparatus, for the combustion of hydrogen absorbed oxygen and formed water in the end. The weight of this water turned out to be exactly equal to the weight loss of both gases.

Administration name

Fysisch Kabinet

Dating

[{'start': '1790', 'end_precision': u'', 'end': '1791', 'start_precision': u''}]

Object number

FK 0219 02-03