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  Web Book Home Page | Chemogenesis Main Index Foreword:  Chemogenesis & Chemical Education Part I   Atoms | Elements | Periodic Tables 1.1  Introduction to Chemogenesis 1.2  Nucleosynthesis of The Elements 1.3  The Segrè Chart 1.4  Quantum Numbers to Periodic Tables 1.5  The Periodic Table: What Is It Showing? 1.6  The INTERNET Database of Periodic Tables 1.7  Periodicity Part II   Structure | Bonding | Material Type 2.1  Mono-Bond Typed Binary Compounds 2.2  Binary Compound Synthlet 2.3  Electronegativity 2.4  van Arkel-Ketelaar Triangles of Bonding 2.5  Tetrahedra of Structure, Bonding & Material Type 2.6  Structure, Bonding & Material Synthlet 2.7  The Classification of Matter: Chemical Stuff Part III   Interactions | Reactions | Mechanisms 3.1  The Chemogenesis Analysis: An Overview 3.2  Lewis and Brønsted Models of Acidity 3.3  The Hard Soft [Lewis] Acid Base Principle 3.4  Main Group Elemental Hydrides 3.5  Five Hydrogen Probe Experiments 3.6  Congeneric Dots, Series & Planars 3.7  Quantifying Congeneric Behaviour 3.8  Ligand Replacement Congeneric Series 3.9  Congeneric Array Interactions 3.10  Emergence of Organic Chemistry 3.11  Congeneric Array Database 3.12  The Five Reaction Chemistries 3.13  Lewis Acids & Lewis Bases: A New Analysis 3.14  The Lewis Acid/Base Interaction Matrix 3.15  Patterns in Reaction Chemistry Poster 3.16  Lewis Acid/Base Interaction Matrix Database 3.17  Nucleophiles, Bases & The Fluoride Ion 3.18  Redox Chemistry 3.19  Redox Chemistry Synthlet 3.20  Radical Chemistry 3.21  Diradical Chemistry 3.22  Photochemistry 3.23  Species/Species Interactions 3.24  The Simplest Mechanistic Step: STAD 3.25  Unit & Compound Mechanistic Steps 3.26  The Mechanism Matrix 3.27  Addition To A Double Bond Synthlet 3.28  Pericyclic Reaction Chemistry Part IV   Chemical Theory 4.1  Why Do Chemical Reactions Occur? 4.2a  Thermochemistry: List Reactions Synthlet 4.2b  Thermochemistry: Play With Reaction Synthlet 4.2c  Thermochemistry: Bulid A Reaction Synthlet 4.3  Timeline of Structural Theory 4.4  Modern Lewis Theory 4.5  Valence Shell Electron Pair Repulsion: VSEPR 4.6  Diatomic Species by Molecular Orbital Theory 4.7  Polyatomic Species: Molecular Orbitals 4.8  Organic π-Systems 4.9  Functional Group Database Part V   Complexity & Emergence 5.1  Chemistry & Complexity: Systems 5.2  Linear Chemistry Systems 5.3  Chemical Systems Prone to Complexity Part VI   Extras 6.1  Chemogenesis Videos 6.2  Chemical Thesaurus Reaction Chemistry Database 6.3  Paper: Chemogenesis 6.4  Paper: Electronegativity as a Basic Elemental Property (FoC) 6.5  Workshop: What is Chemistry? 6.6  Paper: Scientific laws, Dalton’s postulates, chemical reactions
          and Wolfram’s NKS (FoC) 6.7  Literature References & Further Reading

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The INTERNET Database of Periodic Tables

There are thousands of periodic tables in web space, but this is the only comprehensive database of periodic tables & periodic system formulations. If you know of an interesting periodic table that is missing, please contact the database curator: Mark R. Leach Ph.D. The database holds information on periodic tables, the discovery of the elements, the elucidation of atomic weights and the discovery of atomic structure (and much, much more).

Periodic Tables from the year 1862 :

Béguyer de Chancourtois' Vis Tellurique

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.

Many thanks to Peter Wothers – and courtesy of the Master and Fellows of St Catharine's College, Cambridge – comes a high quality image of the original 1862 formulation. Click here, or on the image to enlarge:

Watch Peter Wothers 'unravel' and show Prof. Martyn Poliakoff this first periodic table at 17min 50sec into the YouTube video below:

Some more information:

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.

It has been suggested that Chancourtois called his formulation a telluric helix because tellurium is found in the middle. However, most elements are found as there their 'earths' – tellus, telluris – or oxides, which for a mineralogist would have been highly significant.

The formulation was rediscovered in the 1889 (P. J. Hartog, "A First Foreshadowing of the Periodic Law" Nature 41, 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.]

See also:

• Dutch Wikipedia
• ScienceWorld
• Science & Society Picture Library
• Roy Alexander's All Periodic Tables site

A three dimensional models of the telluric helix:

There are representations of the 1862 formulation at the School of Mines at ParisTech:

Meyer's Periodic System

In his book, The Periodic Table: A Very Short Introduction, Eric Scerri writes how Lothar Meyer devised a partial periodic tables consisting of 28 elements arranged in order of increasing atomic weight in which the elements were grouped into vertical columns according to their chemical valences:

Annual Report on the Progress of Chemistry and Related Areas of Other Sciences 1862

Jahresbericht über die Fortschritte der Chemie und verwandter Theile anderer Wissenschaften. (Annual Report on the progress of chemistry and related areas of other sciences.) HathiTrust Index scanned reports 1847-1910.

The 1862 table of data is here.

Mark Leach writes:

"Every year the annual report started with a list of the known chemical elements and their atomic weights, however, to the modern eye there were many systermatic errors. For example, oxygen (Sauerstoff) is given as having a weight of 8 which would have caused – due to the importance of oxides – other atomic weights to be out by a factor of 2 or 3. Once a list of correct atomic weights was known, it would be possible to construct a periodic table of the elements.

"In 1858 the Cannazzario letter gave more correct list of atomic weights and corrected the numerous stoichiometric errors that plagued chemistry at the time. Over the years from 1858 to 1873 the entries in the annual report gradually adopted the Cannazzario logic."

• Didym D = 48 was actually a mixture of rare earth elements.
• Norium No is a discredited claim to be what is now known as hafnium.
• The missing elements had yet to be discovered.
• Be = 4.7 and 7.0
• Si = 14 and 21
• Zr = 22.4 and 33.6 and 44.8

Thanks to René and Mario Rodriguez for the tip!

© Mark R. Leach Ph.D. 1999 –

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