Chemists of the time thought combustible items contained a substance called phlogiston, from a Greek word meaning 'to set on fire.' Lavoisier began weighing objects in closed volumes and evaluating the volume and weight before and after combustion, refuting the idea that phlogiston was lost and moving towards the understanding of oxygen and its role in combustion.
A visual chronology of Asimov's ~1500 scientific inventions and discoveries.
