Discoverer of Acetylene Edmund Davy

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You may have seen welding, where iron rods and other things are joined together. For welding, gases from two separate cylinders pass through pipes and meet at the pipe’s end to create a flame. This gas flame burns like a stove but is hot enough to melt iron. One gas is acetylene and the other is oxygen. Acetylene burns quickly in the presence of oxygen. Besides welding, acetylene has many other uses. The gas was discovered by a scientist named Edmund Davy.

Edmund Davy was born in 1785 in Cornwall, Britain. He was the cousin of the famous scientist Humphry Davy. After completing his studies, Edmund worked as Humphry Davy's assistant at the Royal Institute and later became a chemistry professor at the Dublin Society. He discovered a soft form of platinum that could absorb gases from the air. Edmund mainly studied how heat affects different metals and developed methods to find harmful elements using electricity. While heating potassium carbonate and carbon, a new gas—acetylene—was accidentally discovered. Davy found this gas burns at very high temperatures with oxygen, making it famous. He passed away on November 5, 1857.