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World's Oldest Periodic Table Chart Found At University of St Andrews In Scotland (phys.org)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: A periodic table chart discovered at the University of St Andrews is thought to be the oldest in the world. The chart of elements, dating from 1885, was discovered in the University's School of Chemistry in 2014 by Dr. Alan Aitken during a clear out. The storage area was full of chemicals, equipment and laboratory paraphernalia that had accumulated since the opening of the chemistry department at its current location in 1968. Following months of clearing and sorting the various materials a stash of rolled up teaching charts was discovered. Within the collection was a large, extremely fragile periodic table that flaked upon handling. Suggestions that the discovery may be the earliest surviving example of a classroom periodic table in the world meant the document required urgent attention to be authenticated, repaired and restored.

Mendeleev made his famous disclosure on periodicity in 1869, the newly unearthed table was rather similar, but not identical to Mendeleev's second table of 1871. However, the St Andrews table was clearly an early specimen. The table is annotated in German, and an inscription at the bottom left -- "Verlag v. Lenoir & Forster, Wien" -- identifies a scientific printer who operated in Vienna between 1875 and 1888. Another inscription -- "Lith. von Ant. Hartinger & Sohn, Wien" -- identifies the chart's lithographer, who died in 1890. Working with the University's Special Collections team, the University sought advice from a series of international experts. Following further investigations, no earlier lecture chart of the table appears to exist. Professor Eric Scerri, an expert on the history of the periodic table based at the University of California, Los Angeles, dated the table to between 1879 and 1886 based on the represented elements. For example, both gallium and scandium, discovered in 1875 and 1879 respectively, are present, while germanium, discovered in 1886, is not.

62 comments

  1. Chemics from 1969 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Call the bomb squad.

    1. Re:Chemics from 1969 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Call the spelling squad first. "Chemics"?

    2. Re: Chemics from 1969 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Buy yourself some dictionary ?? Chemics is perfectly fine.

    3. Re: Chemics from 1969 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's an archaic word and in any case it refers to a person... There was no person found in the storage.

    4. Re:Chemics from 1969 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm from Romania. Sorry for my English!!

  2. So where is the free and open PNG/PDF of it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I want to know when we will be able to print up a copy for our own walls, seeing as this thing is around 100 years out of copyright (20 years if we go by modern copyright law :P) Thanks Berne Convention and associated extensions!

    1. Re:So where is the free and open PNG/PDF of it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The only photograph will be copyrighted.

  3. In pre-Soviet Russia... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...Polonium suspiciously missing from Mendelejev's table.

    Is it coincidence that when the Polonium is found, it is next to Moscovium?

    1. Re:In pre-Soviet Russia... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      but in Soviet Russia... Polonium kills YOU!!!

  4. THERE YOU ARE! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hey, there ya are. I've been trying to find the rest of your posts. The last one I had stopped at Postulate V1. Repost V1 and everything afterwards please. Unlike most of these closed minded asshats on here, I wanna hear what you've got to say.

  5. One more thing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Oh and if possible, is there a forum where you regularly post? Trying to use slashdot to learn anything is a fucking waste of energy.

  6. A couple videos of this periodic table by complete+loony · · Score: 5, Informative

    This periodic table appeared on Objectivity, while it was being restored by paper conservator Richard Hawkes. Also discussed by Professor Sir Martyn Poliakoff on Periodic Video's.

    --
    09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
    1. Re:A couple videos of this periodic table by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I love how he just tears the old parchment and breathes the dust in.

    2. Re:A couple videos of this periodic table by complete+loony · · Score: 1

      Minor note, he tore the canvas backing that will probably be discarded, not the printed paper itself.

      --
      09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
    3. Re: A couple videos of this periodic table by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sounds right. Chemists tend to be able to tell the difference between the canvas and the table. I imagine in his haste to begin repairs and the lightheaded feeling from breathing the dust, the canvas was irreparably torn.

    4. Re:A couple videos of this periodic table by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I was going to say, I was pretty sure I'd seen this a while ago in the brady haran collection.

  7. Re:What is magnetism? by msauve · · Score: 1

    "A magnetic field, what exactly is it?"

    It's something you can buy a lot of from China for a couple of bucks.

    --
    "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
  8. Slow news decade? by chrism238 · · Score: 0

    So, found in 2014, but being reported just now?

    1. Re:Slow news decade? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      For slashdot, that's pretty good.

    2. Re:Slow news decade? by Joce640k · · Score: 1

      To be fair, it takes time to check the facts and make sure they're not publishing Fake News.

      --
      No sig today...
    3. Re:Slow news decade? by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 1

      For slashdot, that's pretty good.

      For Scotland, that's pretty good.

    4. Re:Slow news decade? by Shimbo · · Score: 2

      It's the International Year of the Periodic Table this year, so it's topical. http://www.rsc.org/iypt/

  9. Re:What is magnetism? by Tuidjy · · Score: 0

    You must be joking. No dead physicists, I understand, but no equations? An electro-magnetic wave is created by oscillating fields, no moving charges needed. How the Hell do you expect people to describe fields, by waving their hands?

    In any case, it's like asking me to explain to you how I know the weight of a bucketfull of sand, measured in empty beer bottles, but not use any numbers.

    --
    No good deed goes unpunished...
  10. Periodic Table by tquasar · · Score: 2

    My high school chemistry teacher had a large version he displayed at the front of the class for the final exam. I got an A, most students couldn't read the table.

  11. Helium is missing = not that exact dating by DrTJ · · Score: 2

    He was discovered in 1868 by Norman Lockyer, which is 17 years prior to the stated date of this table. It should have made the table.

    That probably means that is hard to use the presence of a single element to exactly pin down the date. Germanium could be missing for the same reason Helium is, putting the date uncertainty back to 1879-1888, it would seem.

    1. Re:Helium is missing = not that exact dating by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      In 1868 they only found it on the sun through its spectral line. Perhaps they didn't know enough about it to place it accurately on the periodic table?

    2. Re:Helium is missing = not that exact dating by Sique · · Score: 3, Informative

      If you look more closely, any intert gas is missing, as Dmitry Mendeleev looked at hydrides and oxides to put the elements in the periodic table (Look at the table head!), and inert gases don't have hydrides and oxides. Thus he had to omit them.

      --
      .sig: Sique *sigh*
    3. Re:Helium is missing = not that exact dating by Tuidjy · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Exactly. Helium is a noble gas, it does not easily react with anything, and if I remember my high school chemistry, this made it hard for physicists to place elements on the table, as they had no compounds (acids/oxides) to work with. Actually I just realized that I lack the vocabulary to talk about Chemistry in English.

      Anyway, I have not looked at the table yet, but I will be surprised to find any noble gases on it. Actually, I am being stupid, of course they won't be there, the ones after helium were discovered around the turn of the century.

      --
      No good deed goes unpunished...
    4. Re:Helium is missing = not that exact dating by complete+loony · · Score: 1

      The inert gasses were chalked in later (see objectivity video I posted above for some close ups).

      --
      09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
    5. Re:Helium is missing = not that exact dating by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 4, Interesting

      In 1868 they only found it on the sun through its spectral line. Perhaps they didn't know enough about it to place it accurately on the periodic table?

      From the solar spectrogram was initially thought to be a metal, hence the -ium suffix. Its place on the Table was probably still controversial at the time this was printed.If He were being canonically named today, it would have been called helon.

    6. Re:Helium is missing = not that exact dating by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sun = Helios in greek, so surely it would be Helion?

    7. Re:Helium is missing = not that exact dating by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 1

      -on is the suffix for noble gases. Hence argon, neon, xenon, krypton, radon, oganesson.

    8. Re:Helium is missing = not that exact dating by ChrisMaple · · Score: 1

      Argon is almost 1% of the atmosphere. Reading the wikipedia article, it's difficult to fix a date for the "discovery", but 1882 and 1894 are both reasonable dates.

      On the other hand, identifying Argon's atomic properties so that it can be placed on the chart is more difficult than just finding it.

      --
      Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
  12. Re:What is magnetism? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    China just copied my magnetic field, what a bunch of south poles.

  13. Periodic table my ass by dcooper_db9 · · Score: 2

    This is what you get when chemists play bingo

    --
    I do not block ads. I do block third party scripts.
    1. Re:Periodic table my ass by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 4, Funny

      This was at St. Andrews - the chemists we’re playing golf.

      Which explains the presence p, on this particular chart, of the so-called elements “mashie” and “niblick”.

      --
      #DeleteChrome
  14. The oldest one? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I somehow doubt that the oldest periodic table of the world was already commercially printed and published.
    The first one is most likely somewhere in the middle of some "scientific paper" from that century.

    1. Re:The oldest one? by jabuzz · · Score: 3, Informative

      It's the oldest one designed to be hung on the wall of a classroom, lab, lecture theater etc.

  15. Re:What is magnetism? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sounds like you need a better model.

    Give this one a try.

  16. Acrostic by sinktank · · Score: 2

    How HE LIkes BEer Beef & Cake!
    Now Obese Forms are NEver Nature’s MakinG.
    ALl of SImilar Plight
    Should C[L]onsider ARight
    Keeping CAre of the SCoops that they T[I]ake.

  17. Re:creimer is a good janitor. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Bring a bucket of haggis!

  18. Re:Sounds like University of St Andrews by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Still pining away for creimer? Sad. Fucking sad.

  19. Impressive but... by McCaskill · · Score: 1

    I have an 1875 Piano in my basement (Fischer), and it doesn't worth anything.

    1. Re:Impressive but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have an 1875 Piano in my basement (Fischer), and it doesn't worth anything.

      As a general rule, old pianos ... um ... don't worth anything, because almost nobody wants a damned piano these days. There's literally tons of them that nobody is interested in owning, you pretty much can't give away an old piano.

      Old scientific stuff ... um ... does worth something, because people place a higher value on it.

      The oldest example of something like this, yeah, that is something people are going to assign value to. Your piano from 1875, not so much.

  20. Found in Africa! No, the middle east! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Top level kek.

  21. actually news for nerds by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hey, back off. It's actually news for nerds, for a change, and it's not a dupe.

  22. Elementary Troll by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    April 1, 2019 - Washington DC

    While the rest of the US government has opened, Trump has not signed the bill that would reopen NIST. Apparently he is requiring them to rename the element Americinum as "Trumpium", and they aren't going along with him.

  23. Re:Germanium. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yeah! And Nixon was bad too!