Carbon dioxide was the first gas to be identified as a component of the air around us. Its effects were observed long before scientists understood the function of carbon dioxide.
Around 1640, the Flemish scientist Jan Baptist van Helmont discovered that air was not composed of a single substance as previously understood and there were vapours different from air. He coined the term ‘gas’ to describe these vapours.
The gas given off by burning wood was collected, and Helmont called it ‘gas sylvestre’. It was later understood that this gas was carbon dioxide.
A more substantial study of carbon dioxide was done by the British chemist Joseph Black through systematic investigation. In 1756, Black discovered that heating carbonates resulted in the release of carbon dioxide. In 1783, French physicist Pierre Laplace demonstrated that oxygen from the air is used to burn carbon stored in the body and produce the carbon dioxide in exhaled breath.
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