ABSTRACT
Chemistry is a science based on the results of experiment, but its real foundation belongs to quite modern times when experiment began to take the form of exact measurement. For ages all kinds of chemical operations and manufactures had been practised in a crude way, such as the production of soap, glass, dyes, and pigments, the distillation of alcohol from wine, the production of sulphuric acid from green vitriol, and so forth. At different periods in the history of the science various estimates have been formed as to the influence of different men or the importance of different discoveries. Many writers have been accustomed to date the rise of chemistry as a branch of science, from the time of Robert Boyle, “The Father of Chemistry” as he has been called, at the end of the seventeenth century. Boyle gave the first clear and precise idea of the word element so much used in chemistry.
