Hydrogen History Before 1960

British scientist Henry Cavendish (1731-1810) demonstrated to the Royal Society of London in 1766 that there were different types of air: ‘fixed air’ or carbon dioxide and ‘inflammable air’ or hydrogen. Cavendish evolved hydrogen gas by reacting zinc metal with hydrochloric acid. He proved that hydrogen is much lighter than air and was the first to produce water by combining hydrogen and oxygen with the help of an electric spark in the late 1770s.

In 1783, Jacques Alexander Chales, a French Scientist, launched the first hydrogen balloon flight. Known as “Charliere” the unmanned balloon flew to an altitude of 3 km. Three months later,

he himself flew in his first manned hydrogen balloon.

In 1785 Lavoisier repeated Cavendish’s experiments and proved that hydrogen and oxygen were the basic elements of water. Named by Lavoisier in 1788 Hydrogen is from two Greek words, hydro meaning water and genes meaning ‘born of’.

In 1800 William Nicholson and Sir Anthony Carlisle discovered electrolysis and initiated the science of electrochemistry. In their experiments they employed a voltaic pile to liberate oxygen

and hydrogen from water. They discovered that the amount of oxygen and hydrogen liberated by the current was proportional to the amount of current used.

In 1838 Swiss chemist Christian Friedrich Schoenbein discovered that hydrogen and oxygen can be combined to produce water and electric current- the fuel cell effect. Sir William Robert

Grove was an English scientist and judge who demonstrated in 1845 Schoenbein’s discovery on a practical scale by creating a ‘gas battery’ and earned the platitude ‘father of the fuel cell’. This led to his development of the ‘gaseous voltaic battery,” the forerunner of the modern fuel cell. The Grove cell as it came to be called, used porous platinum electrodes and sulfuric acid as the electrolyte.

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky first proposed hydrogen-fueled rocket propulsion for space flights in the late 1890s. In 1911 Carl Bosch directed the development for ammonia and fertilizer to be manufactured from hydrogen and nitrogen gases, leading to the manufacturing of synthetic fertilizers.

During the 1920s Rudolf Erren converted the internal combustion engines of trucks, buses, and

submarines to use hydrogen or hydrogen mixtures. J.B.S. Haldane produced hydrogen by using wind-generated electricity in 1923. Rudolph A. Erren, a developer of hydrogen fueled motor vehicles, demonstrated their use in fleet service during the 1930s.

In 1950 Akira Mitsui was successful in biologically producing hydrogen using special types of algae and microorganisms. In 1959 Francis T. Bacon of Cambridge University made the first practical hydrogen air fuel cell. The 5kW system powered a welding machine. He named it the ‘Bacon cell’. Hydrogen fuel cells, based on Bacon’s design have been used to generate on-board electricity, heat and water for astronauts aboard the Apollo spacecraft and all subsequent

space shuttle missions.