First use of chemical symbols in British textbook.In 1832, Edward Turner wrote a Preface to the 4th edition of his textbook, Elements of Chemistry (published 1833), in which he explained his use of symbols to represent reactants and products in a chemical reaction of Cyanogen, because he found they solved the difficulty of giving a “clear and concise description of. the phenomena in ordinary language.” His was the first use of chemical symbols in a British chemistry textbook. Turner used some algebra-type notation as suggested by William Whewell with parts of Jöns Jacob Berzelius's system, in which iron was represented by Fe (from Ferrum) and oxygen by O. Thus Fe + O represented one oxide of iron, and 2Fe + 3O represented another. Dots over the symbol indicated degree of oxidation, and an underline stood for two equivalents of a substance.« |
