Helen Cooke: The 250th Anniversary of Joseph Priestley's Discovery of Oxygen

Helen Cooke gives a talk entitled “The 250th Anniversary of Joseph Priestley’s Discovery of Oxygen”. This talk was presented on 16 July 2024. It is followed by a short presentation by Peter Morris on his visit to Joseph Priestley’s birthplace in Fieldhead, north of Birstall, West Yorkshire, the day before.

Helen’s talk celebrates the 250th anniversary of Joseph Priestley's discovery of oxygen, which he called dephlogisticated air, on 1st August 1774. Some of the circumstances and events which led up to Priestley's most famous discovery, the people around him who helped to facilitate it, and the place where 'dephlogisticated air' was isolated are explored. Priestley was a prolific writer, producing many publications in which he recorded details of his experiments, the background to them and the narrative surrounding them; excerpts from his publications are featured throughout the talk. The apparatus Priestley used also forms part of the story, how he sourced it and how he tested the gases produced to establish their nature and properties. The talk concludes with some examples of how and where Priestley is commemorated in the UK and elsewhere.

Peter shows pictures of the site of Priestley’s birthplace on the corner of Owler Lane and Fieldhead Lane, just south of the busy M62 motorway. A comparison of an engraving of the site in the nineteenth century before Priestley’s birthplace was demolished shows that the house to the east of the birthplace still exists and gives some idea of the scale of Priestley’s former home.