This engraving is marked “Plate IV” and “Van Marum’s Gasometer” and “Heny Lascelles delt” and “J. Pass Sculpt” and “London, Published as the Act directs, Feby 21, 1801 by J. Wilkes.” It was prepared for the fourth volume of the Encyclopaedia Londinensis (1810).
Martinus Van Marum was a Dutch chemist who, after having seen Lavoisier’s demonstrations of the composition of water in Paris in 1785, devised a user-friendly gasometer for measuring the amount of hydrogen and of oxygen produced by this operation.
John Wilkes (1750-1810) was a London printer and bookseller. His Encyclopaedia Londoniensis was published in 24 volumes between about 1801 and 1828.
Ref: “A Letter from Doctor Van Marum to M. Berthollet, containing a description of a new Gasometer,” The Monthly Review 7 (1792): 493-494.
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