File:Bulletin - United States National Museum (1966) (20320073948).jpg

Title: Bulletin - United States National Museum
Identifier: bulletinunitedst2401966unit (find matches)
Year: 1877 (1870s)
Authors: United States National Museum; Smithsonian Institution; United States. Dept. of the Interior
Subjects: Science
Publisher: Washington : Smithsonian Institution Press, (etc. ); for sale by the Supt. of Docs. , U. S. Govt Print. Off.
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Smithsonian Libraries

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and mysterious nature in .ill he did, Found this luminous mattei while searching for something else Ilr u.is a glassmaker by profession, bul he had abandoned ii in order to be free for tIn- pui the philosophical stone with which he wa Having put it into his mind that the secrel of the philosophical stone consisted in the preparation of urine, this man worked in .ill kinds ol manners and for .1 \it\ long time without finding anything. Final- ly, in the year 1669, aftei .1 strong distillation ol urine, he found in the recipient a luminant matter thai has since been called phosphorus. He showed ii to some 11! his friends, among them Mister Kunkel (sic)." ' Neither the name nor the phenomenon were reallv new. Organic phosphorescenl materials were known to Aristotle, and a lithophosphorus was the subject of a hook published in 1640, based on a discover) made l>\ a shoemaker. Yicenzo Casciarolo. on .1 mountain- side 'idiuntio Alchid Bechil S.uaciaii philosophi," in which Ferdinand Hoefer found a distillation of urine with clay and carbonaceous ma- ni ul described, mid the resulting product named eseai liuncle.' It would he worth looking for this souk e; although Bechil would still remain an entirely unsuccessful predecessor, it does seem strange that in all the distillations of arbitrary mixtures, the condi- tions should never before 1669 have been right for the formation ami the observation of phosphorus. For Brand's contemporaries at least, the discover) was new and exciting. The philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646 1 716) considered it impor- tant enough to devote sonic of his time (between his woik as librarian in Hanover and Wolfenbiittel, his efforts to reunite the Protestant and the Catholic churches, and his duties as 1'iiw Counccllor in what â Wilhelm Homberg, Mfmoires Acadin 1730), vol. 10, under date of April SO, 1692, pp. ".7 61. lot; i liis. Lithiophosphorus sioe de /..' (Venice, 1640 i ited in Peter Joseph M H ich, 2nd ed. Leipzig: Weidmann, 1789), vol. \, p. 508, footnoti "Kletwich (de phosph. liqu. etsolid. 1689, Thes. II1." 1 Ferdinand Hoefer, Hist â .< Paris, 1843), vol. 1. p. I 19.
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Figure i. I in ilchemisi discovers phosphorus. \ painting l>\ Joseph Wrighi i >- u_I779) °' Derby, England. we would call a Department of Justice) to a histor) of phosphorus. This friend ol Huygens and Boyli to prove that Kunckel was not justified in claiming the discovery for himself."' Since then, it has been shown that Johann Kunckel (1630 1703) actually worked out the method which neither Brand nor his friend Kraft wanted to disclose. Bo\ le also developed a method independently, published it. and instructed 5 G. YV. vi in I i ii m/. Wen oirt I Ata iemi P Akademiedti Wissenschqften, Miscellanea Berolincnsia (Berlin, 171m, vol 1, p. 91. I'U'IR in: HISTORY Ol 1'HOSI'Ht IRIS 79

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