NICHOLSON, WILLIAM.

A Dictionary of Practical and Theoretical Chemistry, with its Application to the Arts and Manufactures; and to the Explanation of the Phænomena of Nature. Including throughout the latest Discoveries, and the present State of Knowledge on those Subjects. With Plates and Tables.

(London), Richard Phillip, 1808. Contemp. full calf. Gilt spine, raised bands. Titlelabel with gilt lettering. Some wear to edges. Frontcover detached. Spine loosening and a tear across middle of spine. Wear to spine ends. Leaves unpaginated. In all around 800 pp. 12 engraved plates. 6 large folded tables (Tables of Nomeclatures, Tables of Chemical Compounds, Table of Correspondence of Thermometers). Text in general clean, a few leaves with toning, plates intact but with some browning and foxing. 2 Tables with some dampstaining. Plate V as frontispiece.

Scarce first edition. Nicholson considered it an entirely new work. In the Advertisement is stated "This work, though formed on the basis of the Dictionary in two volumes quarto, published several years since, by the same Author, is in effect AN ENTIRELY NEW WORK; the articles being either considerably enlarged, or entirely rewritten, and in every instance being adopted to the present improved state of Chemical Science." The Appendix contains Humphrey Davy's Bakerian Lecture on the decomposition of the fixed alkalies by electricity.

Nicholson in collaboration with Anthony Carlisle constructed a voltaic pile and by this equipment they discovered the evolution of gases by the passage of the electric current through water (the decomposition of water). They were the first to use electricity to produce chemical actions.
Not in Duveen - Not in Roy G. Neville (only the second ed.) - Partington IV, p.20.

Order-nr.: 53133