Colored Rings made by Electrical Explosions on Metal Surfaces, by Jos. Priestley

Description

In the 1768 paper,
An Account of Rings consisting of all the Prismatic Colours, made by Electrical Explosions on the Surface of Pieces of Metal,
Joseph Priestly describes a phenomenon that he observed when “electrical explosions” occurred on the surfaces of different metals. He postulates that the surfaces are affected in such a way that the characteristics of light refracted from the surface is altered to produce colors of the spectrum, akin to light being refracted through a prism.
The item is a First Edition, extracted and disbound from The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Vol. 58, For the Year 1768, pages 68-74. This volume of the transactions was published in London in 1769.
Joseph Priestley
, FRS (13 March 1733 – 6 February 1804) was an 18th-century English theologian, Dissenting clergyman, natural philosopher, chemist, educator, and political theorist who published over 150 works. He is usually credited with the discovery of oxygen, having isolated it in its gaseous state, although Carl Wilhelm Scheele and Antoine Lavoisier also have a claim to the discovery. During his lifetime, Priestley's considerable scientific reputation rested on his invention of soda water, his writings on electricity, and his discovery of several "airs" (gases), the most famous being what Priestley dubbed "dephlogisticated air" (oxygen). However, Priestley's determination to defend phlogiston theory and to reject what would become the chemical revolution eventually left him isolated within the scientific community. [Wikipedia]