360 A HISTORY OF 



tions ceased to appear there was no medium of publi- 

 cation for some years except the minutes of the business 

 meetings, which were regularly printed. 



In 1836 an important innovation took place, and 

 for the first time, instead of bringing scientific papers 

 before the ordinary meetings, special meetings for read- 

 ing and discussing such communications were held ; 

 these meetings were called the " Evening Scientific 

 Meetings." At the first meeting, held on the 26th of 

 January, Professor Davy gave an account of an appa- 

 rently new gas, produced by the action of water on a 

 substance obtained by heating tartrate of potash in a 

 retort, and exhibited some experiments with the gas. 

 This was the gas now known as acetylene, the dis- 

 covery of which was one of considerable scientific 

 importance ; the gas is now extensively employed, and 

 it is prepared by a method very similar to that which 

 Davy used in the Society's laboratory, except that 

 calcium carbide is used instead of potassium carbide. 

 The manufacture of calcium carbide for the preparation 

 of acetylene has become an important industry. Ex- 

 actly eighteen months later, Davy submitted to the 

 Royal Irish Academy a paper on this discovery, which 

 was published in vol. xviii. of the Transactions of the 

 Academy. He determined the composition of the gas 

 and called it bicarburet of hydrogen. In 1859, the 

 gas was rediscovered by the French chemist Berthelot, 

 and, curiously enough, it is to Berthelot that the credit 

 of the discovery is commonly attributed in chemical 

 text-books, notwithstanding Davy's twenty-three years 

 of priority. It is alleged that Davy did not establish 

 the actual composition of the gas, but anyone who 

 takes the trouble to read his paper will see that this is 

 a mistake. The minutes of the evening meetings 

 appear regularly in the Proceedings down to 1839. 



