Page 24 - Encyclopedia of Chemical Compounds 3 Vols

Timeline of the Development of Chemical Compounds

1300s • Potassium sulfate becomes known to alchemists.
1500s • Spanish explorers bring vanilla to Europe from South
and Central America, where it had already been used to
flavor food.

1603 • Flemish chemist Jan Baptista van Helmont isolates a
new gas produced during the combustion of wood, which
is eventually called carbon dioxide.

1608 • Potash is one of the first chemicals to be exported by
American colonists, with shipments leaving Jamestown,
Virginia.
1610 • French alchemist Jean Be ´guin prepares acetone.

1620 • Flemish physician and alchemist Jan Baptista van Hel-
mont first discovers nitric oxide.

1625 • German chemist Johann Rudolf Glauber is believed to
have been the first to produce hydrogen chloride in a
reasonably pure form. Later he is first to make ammo-
nium nitrate artificially.
1695 • The term Epsom salts is introduced by British natura-
list Nehemiah Grew, who names the compound after the
spring waters near Epsom, England, from which it was
often extracted.

1215 1492
Magna Carta Christopher 1620
1096 1099 accepted by King Columbus sails Pilgrims land at
First Crusade John of England. to the Americas. Plymouth, Mass.
. . . .

1000 1200 1400 1500 1600 1700

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