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Periodic Table formulations from the years before 1900, by date:
1000BC
Elements Known To The Ancients
Ten elements were known to the ancients: carbon, sulfur, iron, copper, silver, tin, platinum, gold, mercury and lead.
Carbon and iron were known in the iron age, copper and tin in the bronze age and platinum was known in Aztec culture:
450BC
Classical Elements
The Greek Classical Elements — Earth, Water, Air, Fire and Aether — date from 450 BC or so, and persisted throughout the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance, deeply influencing European thought and culture.
Plato characterizes the elements from a list created by the Sicilian philosopher Empedocles called these the four "roots." Plato seems to have been the first to use the term element:
1682
Kenelm Digby's A Choice Collection of Rare Secrets
1718
von Francois Etienne Geoffroy's Tabelle relativer Affinitätsstärken
1778
Diderot's Alchemical Chart of Affinities
1789
Antoine Lavoisier
Antoine Lavoisier's produced the first modern list of chemical elements, containing among others, the 23 elements of those known then. He also redefined the term "element". Previously the metals, except mercury, were not considered elements. Wikipedia
A list of 33 simple substances compiled by Lavoisier, from Traite? Ele?mentaire de Chimie, Cuchet, Paris, 1789, p. 192:
From Peter van der Krogt's Elementymology & Elements Multidict web site:
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1800
Elements Known in The Year 1800
Some 27 elements were known by 1800.
This was enough to understand that an element was in some way special and that compounds were made from elements, but not enough to construct a comprehensive periodic table:
1803
A very early notebook:
1808
John Dalton's Elements
A fuller list of Dalton's elements and symbols:
From from Peter van der Krogt's Elementymology & Elements Multidict web site and here.
1843
Gmelin's System
L. Gmelin, Handbuch der anorganischen chemie 4th ed., Heidelberg, 1843, vol. 1, p. 52:
1850
Johann Dobereiner's Triads (1780 - 1849)
Triads are found with sequence of three similar elements, where the middle element has a mass equal to the average of the least and most massive. The diagram below, updated from here, uses mid-nineteenth century atomic mass information rather than modern data. If atomic numbers (Z) are used (a property unknown in 1850), the triads are exact:
1862
The French geologist , Alexandre-Émile Béguyer de Chancourtois was the first person to make use of atomic weights to produce a classification of periodicity. He drew the elements as a continuous spiral around a metal cylinder divided into 16 parts. The atomic weight of oxygen was taken as 16 and was used as the standard against which all the other elements were compared. Tellurium was situated at the centre, prompting vis tellurique, or telluric screw.
Chancourtois' original formulation includes elements in their correct places, selected compounds and some elements in more than one place. The helix was an important advance in that it introduced the concept of periodicity, but it was flawed. The formulation was rediscovered in the 1889 (P. J. Hartog, "A First Foreshadowing of the Periodic Law" Nature 46, 186-8 (1889)), and since then it has appeared most often in a simplified form that emphasizes the virtues and eliminates its flaws. [Thanks to CG for this info.]
Dutch Wikipedia, ScienceWorld & the Science and Society picture library.
Read more in Roy Alexander's All Periodic Tables site.
1864
One of the first attempts at a periodic table, known as "Newlands octaves", arranged the known elements by atomic weight. Newland noticed that if he broke up his list of elements into groups of seven – starting a new row with the eighth element – the first element in each of those groups had similar chemistry. More here.
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H
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F
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Cl
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Co/Ni
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Br
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Pd
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I
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Pt/Ir
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Li
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Na
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K
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Cu
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Rb
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Ag
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Cs
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Tl
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Gl
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Mg
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Ca
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Zn
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Sr
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Cd
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Ba/V
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Pb
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Bo
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Al
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Cr
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Y
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Ce/La
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U
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Ta
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Th
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C
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Si
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Ti
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In
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Zr
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Sn
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W
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Hg
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N
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P
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Mn
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As
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Di/Mo
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Sb
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Nb
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Bi
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O
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S
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Fe
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Se
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Ro/Ru
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Te
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Au
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Os
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Seeing the word octave applied to this table may lead one to think that Newlands recognised periods of eight elements with repeating properties, as we do with the modern periodic table, for example: Li Be B C N O F Ne.
However, each sequence of Newlands' octaves contain only seven elements. Count the columns! In Newlands' day the group 8 (18) rare gas elements, He, Ne, Ar, Kr & Xe, had not yet been discovered.
To Newlands, Li to Na is an octave of eight elements, the eighth element repeating the properties of the first.
A B C D E F G A
- To Newlands, Li to Na is an octave of eight elements.
- We say Li to Ne is a period of eight elements, and that that Li and Na are in different periods. Indeed, the Li to Na series consists of nine elements.
- In Newlands' day the group 8 (18) rare gas elements, He, Ne,
Ar, Kr & Xe, had not been discovered.
Read more about Newland's Octaves, including a commentry on the origional papers in Carmen Giunta's Elements and Atoms: Case Studies in the Development of Chemistry.
1864
William Odling's Table of Elements
1864
Naquet's Families of Elements
According to Naquet’s 1864 textbook, Principes de Chimie, F. Savy, Paris, (updated by Eric Scerri):
1867
Hinrichs’s Spiral Periodic System
G.D. Hinrichs’s spiral periodic system of 1867. Programm der Atomechanik oder die Chemie eine Mechanik de Pantome, Augustus Hageboek, Iowa City, IA, 1867.
1868
Handwritten draft of the first version of Mendeleev's Periodic Table
Reproduced by permission of Bill Jensen, Curator of the Oesper Collection at the University of Cincinnati:
1869
Mendeleev's Tablelle I
1869
Mendeléeff's Vertical Table (Q&Q's Spelling)
From Quam & Quam's 1934 review paper.pdf
1870
Meyer's Periodic Table. This is rather similar to the Mendeleev attempt at the same time.
1870
Baumhauer's Spiral
From Quam & Quam's 1934 review paper.pdf
1871
Mendeleev's Tablelle II
Mendeleev's Tabelle II in semi-modern Form: To the modern eye, the 1869/71 formulations lacks any Group 18 rare gases and there are few f-block elements:
The success of the Mendeleev periodic table can be attributed to the gaps which Mendeleev predicted would contain undiscovered elements with predictable properties. Mendeleev named these unknown elements using the terms eka, dvi and tri, from the ancient Indian language of Sanskrit:
1881
Spring's Diagram
From Quam & Quam's 1934 review paper.pdf
1882
Bayley's Periodic System
From Quam & Quam's 1934 review paper.pdf
1886
Crookes' Periodic Table
From Quam & Quam's 1934 review paper.pdf
1887
Flavitzky's Arrangement
From Quam & Quam's 1934 review paper.pdf
1892
Bassett's Vertical Arrangement
From Quam & Quam's 1934 review paper.pdf
1892
Bassett Dumb-Bell Form
The Basset 'dumb-bell' formulation, ref. H. Basset, Chem. News, 65 (3-4), 19 (1892).
The image is from Concept of Chemical Periodicity: from Mendeleev Table to Molecular Hyper-Periodicity Patterns E. V. Babaev and Ray Hefferlin, here.
1893
Rang's Periodic Table
From Quam & Quam's 1934 review paper.pdf
1898
Crookes' 3D Periodic Table
From Quam & Quam's 1934 review paper.pdf
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| Periodic Table Data Mapping |
Binary Compounds
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© Mark R. Leach 1999-2009
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