Élémens de chimie. CHAPTAL, J[ean]-A[ntoine, Comte de Chanteloup,1756-1832]. Publication Date: 1790 Condition: Very Good

Title: Élémens de chimie.

Publisher: Montpellier, Jean-François Picot.

Publication Date: 1790

Binding: Hardcover

Book Condition: Very Good

Edition: 1st Edition

3 volumes. 8vo. cx, 259; 443; 460 printed pages. Pages 443-460 of volume 3 : "Extrait des registres de la Societe Royale des Sciences du 23 Decembre 1789" approving this book. Signatures a-f8 g7 A-Q8 R2 ; [ ]1 A-Z8 Aa-Dd8 Ee5 ; [ ]1 A-Z8 Aa-Ee8 Ff4 Gg1. Printed paper booksellers labels on front paste down endpapers of the Bourlot Antiques Bookshop, established in Turin in 1848 in the Piazza San Carlo, & currently located in via Po 7. Marbled endpapers, All edges speckled. Cornflower blue silk place-holders. Very slight sporadic foxing. 13 x 19.5 cm. Contemporary full speckled calf bindings. Spines with contrasting green morocco titling pieces lettered in gilt (some mild chips), cream oval overlays with volume numbers in gilt (one slightly chipped), and twelve sunburst halo emblems surrounding heads within triple gilt fillet rules . Covers with single fillet borders in blind (some slight rubbing, lower corner of volume 3 worn, wormhole to upper hinge not affecting the interior). Chaptal's popular chemistry textbook of general principles, adopts Lavoisier's oxygen theory and proposes the name azote be changed to nitrogene. Chaptal did make some original contributions to pure chemistry & was one of the greatest chemical manufacturers of his age, always ready to apply the lessons of the chemistry laboratory to the factory. "Chaptal wrote as an industrialist with great practical experience, whose concern with the fundamental understanding of nature was subordinate to his interest in controlling chemical reactions. Chaptal's voice was an important and influential one in advocating the introduction of science into the old craft procedures" (DSB). Jean-Antoine Chaptal, count of Chanteloup, born June 5, 1756, in Nojaret and died July 29, 1832 in Paris, was a French chemist, doctor and politician. In 1798, Chaptal was elected a member of the prestigious Chemistry Section of the Institut de France. He became president of the section in 1802 soon after Napoleon appointed him Minister of Interior (6 November 1800). Chaptal was a key figure in the early industrialization in France under Napoleon and during the Bourbon Restoration. He was a founder and first president in 1801 of the important Society for the Encouragement of National Industry and a key organizer of industrial expositions held in Paris in 1801 and subsequent years. Chaptal was especially strong in applied science. Beginning in the early 1780s, he published a continuous stream of practical essays on such things as acids and salts, alum, sulfur, pottery and cheese making, sugar beets, fertilizers, bleaching, degreasing, painting and dyeing. As a chemicals industrialist, he was a major producer of hydrochloric, nitric and sulfuric acids, and was much sought after as a technical consultant for the manufacture of gunpowder. His reputation as a master of applied science, dedicated to using the discoveries of chemistry for the benefit of industry and agriculture, was furthered with the publication of his L'Art de faire, de gouverner et de perfectionner les vins (1801) and La Chimie appliquée aux arts (1806), works that drew on the theoretical chemistry of Lavoisier to revolutionize the art of wine-making in France. His new procedure of adding sugar to increase the final alcohol content of wines came to be called "chaptalization." Beautiful set in very good condition. WorldCat locates only seven copies in the UK. Seller Inventory # 5215