This is a timeline of the history of hydrogen technology.
Timeline
16th century c. 1520 – First recorded observation of hydrogen by Paracelsus through dissolution of metals (iron, zinc, and tin) in sulfuric acid.
17th century 1650 – Turquet de Mayerne obtains a gas or "inflammable air" by the action of dilute sulphuric acid on iron. 1662 – Boyle's law (gas law relating pressure and volume). 1670 – Robert Boyle produces hydrogen by reacting metals with acid. 1672 – "New Experiments touching the Relation between Flame and Air" by Robert Boyle. 1679 – Denis Papin – safety valve. 1700 – Nicolas Lemery shows that the gas produced in the sulfuric acid/iron reaction is explosive in air.
18th century 1755 – Joseph Black confirms that different gases exist. / Latent heat 1766 – Henry Cavendish publishes in "On Factitious Airs" a description of "dephlogisticated air" by reacting zinc metal with hydrochloric acid and isolates a gas 7 to 11 times lighter than air. 1774 – Joseph Priestley isolates and categorizes oxygen. 1780 – Felice Fontana discovers the water-gas shift reaction. 1783 – Jacques Charles makes the first flight with his hydrogen-filled gas balloon or Charlière. 1783 – Antoine Lavoisier and Pierre Laplace measure the heat of combustion of hydrogen using an ice calorimeter. 1784 – Jean-Pierre Blanchard attempts a dirigible hydrogen balloon, but it was unable to steer. 1784 – The invention of the Lavoisier Meusnier iron-steam process, generating hydrogen by passing water vapor over a bed of red-hot iron at 600 °C. 1785 – Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier builds the hybrid Rozière balloon. 1787 – Louis-Bernard Guyton de Morveau and others give hydrogen its name (Gk: hydro = water, -genes = born of). 1787 – Charles's law (gas law, relating volume and temperature). 1789 – Jan Rudolph Deiman and Adriaan Paets van Troostwijk use an electrostatic machine and a Leyden jar for the first electrolysis of water. 1800 – William Nicholson and Anthony Carlisle break down water into hydrogen and oxygen by electrolysis with a voltaic pile. 1800 – Johann Wilhelm Ritter duplicates the experiment with a rearranged set of electrodes to collect the two gases separately.
19th century 1801 – Humphry Davy discovers the concept of the fuel cell. 1806 – François Isaac de Rivaz builds the de Rivaz engine, the first internal combustion engine powered by a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen. 1809 – Thomas Forster observes with a theodolite the drift of small free pilot balloons filled with "inflammable gas". 1809 – Gay-Lussac's law, a gas law relating temperature and pressure. 1811 – Avogadro's law, a gas law relating volume and amount of substance. 1819 – Edward Daniel Clarke invents the hydrogen gas blowpipe. 1820 – W. Cecil writes a letter, "On the application of hydrogen gas to produce a moving power in machinery". 1823 – Goldsworthy Gurney demonstrates limelight. 1823 – Döbereiner's Lamp, a lighter invented by Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner. 1823 – Goldsworthy Gurney devises an oxy-hydrogen blowpipe. 1824 – Michael Faraday invents the rubber balloon. 1826 – Thomas Drummond builds the Drummond Light. 1826 – Samuel Brown tests his internal combustion engine by using it to propel a vehicle up Shooter's Hill. 1834 – Michael Faraday publishes Faraday's laws of electrolysis. 1834 – Benoît Paul Émile Clapeyron – Ideal gas law. 1836 – John Frederic Daniell invents a primary cell in which hydrogen is eliminated in the generation of the electricity. 1839 – Christian Friedrich Schönbein publishes the principle of the fuel cell in the "Philosophical Magazine". 1839 – William Robert Grove develops the Grove cell. 1842 – William Robert Grove develops the first fuel cell (which he calls the gas voltaic battery). 1849 – Eugène Bourdon – Bourdon gauge (manometer). 1863 – Etienne Lenoir makes a test drive from Paris to Joinville-le-Pont with the 1-cylinder, 2-stroke Hippomobile running on coal gas. 1866 – August Wilhelm von Hofmann invents the Hofmann voltameter for the electrolysis of water. 1873 – Thaddeus S. C. Lowe – water gas; the process uses the water gas shift reaction. 1874 – Jules Verne – The Mysterious Island: "Yes, my friends, I believe that water will one day be employed as fuel, that hydrogen and oxygen which constitute it, used singly or together, will furnish an inexhaustible source of heat and light, of an intensity of which coal is not capable." 1884 – Charles Renard and Arthur Constantin Krebs launch the airship La France. 1885 – Zygmunt Florenty Wróblewski publishes hydrogen's critical temperature as 33 K; critical pressure, 13.3 atmospheres; and boiling point, 23 K. 1889 – Ludwig Mond and Carl Langer coin the name fuel cell and try to build one running on air and Mond gas. 1893 – Friedrich Wilhelm Ostwald experimentally determines the interconnected roles of the various components of the fuel cell. 1895 – Hydrolysis. 1896 – Jackson D.D. and Ellms J.W., hydrogen production by microalgae (Anabaena). 1896 – Leon Teisserenc de Bort carries out experiments with high flying instrumental weather balloons. 1897 – Paul Sabatier facilitates the use of hydrogenation with the discovery of the Sabatier reaction. 1898 – James Dewar liquefies hydrogen by using regenerative cooling and his invention, the vacuum flask at the Royal Institution of Great Britain in London. 1899 – James Dewar collects solid hydrogen for the first time. 1900 – Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin launches the first hydrogen-filled Zeppelin LZ1 airship.
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