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Acetylene

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Acetylene and Its Polymers

Part of the book series: SpringerBriefs in Molecular Science ((BRIESFHISTCHEM))

Abstract

 The following chapter presents the early history of acetylene’s discovery, characterization, and production, with focus on the work of Edmund Davy, Marcelin Berthelot, and Thomas Willson.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The species known as olefiant gas is the modern-day ethylene or ethene.

  2. 2.

    The modern density value for acetylene is 1.097 × 10−3 g/mL, while the density of air is 1.2041 × 10−3 g/mL at 20 °C. Thus, using air as a standard, this would give a specific gravity of 0.911 for acetylene, in very good agreement with Davy’s value.

  3. 3.

    His name appears as both ‘Marcelin’ or ‘Marcellin’ in the literature. Berthelot signed ‘Marcellin’ on his first publication in 1850 and he used this spelling in most of his scientific writings, but he signed authorized documents as ‘Marcelin Berthelot’ [16].

  4. 4.

    Although Berthelot did not explain the reasoning for the name, it is generally believed to be the combination of acetyl with the suffix -ene. The acetyl radical, C4H6 (the modern C2H3), was first proposed by Justus von Liebig (1803–1873) in 1839 [20]. The name of this radical was derived from acetic acid as the acid was considered the oxide of the acetyl radical [21]. In a similar manner, if one hydrogen were added to acetyl, this would give ethylene and if two were added, this would give the ethyl radical [20, 21]. Thus, acetylene was presumably named in analogy to ethylene, whereas ethylene was the ethyl radical less one hydrogen, and acetylene was the acetyl radical less one hydrogen. At this point in time, the suffix -ene did not have any specific meaning and did not specifically refer to double-bonded species until after 1866.

  5. 5.

    Although it is not specified, it is thought that Berthelot is referring specifically to coal gas, which was the oldest and most cost-effective form of gas for lighting at the time.

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  1. Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND, USA

    Seth C. Rasmussen

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Rasmussen, S.C. (2018). Acetylene. In: Acetylene and Its Polymers. SpringerBriefs in Molecular Science(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95489-9_2

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