Brush the dust off your periodic tables. (I understand some of you may have destroyed or mutilated them because of the love/hate nature of chemistry.) The series is not meant to be difficult but fun and educational.
Beware of Muggles. Please tighten and return the Nano to the exact location and save space by only initialling the log.
Additional information:
It was discovered by Henry Cavendish in 1766 in London, England.
Robert Boyle (1627-1691; English chemist and physicist) published a paper ("New experiments touching the relation betwixt flame and air") in 1671 in which he described the reaction between iron filings and dilute acids which results in the evolution of the gas
However it was only much later that it was recognized as an element by Henry Cavendish (1731-1810; an English chemist and physicist who also independently discovered nitrogen) in 1766 when he collected it over mercury and described it as "inflammable air from metals". Cavendish described accuratel properties but thought erroneously that the gas originated from the metal rather than from the acid. It was named by Lavoisier.
In 1839 a British scientist Sir William Robert Grove carried out experiments on electrolysis. He used electricity to split water. He then argued one should be able to reverse the electrolysis and so generate electricity from the reaction. When the containers were immersed in dilute sulphuric acid a current indeed flowed between the two electrodes and water was formed in the gas bottles. He linked several of these devices in series to increase the voltage produced in a gas battery. Later the term fuel cell was used by the chemists Ludwig Mond and Charles Langer.
In 1932 Dr Francis Thomas Bacon, an engineer at Cambridge University in the UK, worked further on designs of Mond and Langer. He replaced the platinum electrodes with less expensive nickel gauze and substituted the sulphuric acid electrolyte for alkaline potassium hydroxide (less corrosive to the electrodes). This was in essence the first alkaline fuel cell (AFC) and was called the Bacon Cell. It took Bacon another 27 years to demonstrate a machine capable of producing 5 kW of power, enough to power a welding machine. At about the same time the first fuel cell powered vehicle was demonstrated.
Much later fuel cells were by NASA in the 1960s for the Apollo space missions. Fuel cells have been used for more than 100 missions in NASA spacecraft. Fuel cells are also used in submarines.
It was the lifting agent for the ill fated Hindenberg ballooon was rather than the safer helium.
Source: webelements.com