Where inspiration struck
Bowood House, Chippenham, Wiltshire
+51° 25' 42.36", -2° 2' 15.77"
The 18th-century country estate of Bowood House is where Joseph Priestley discovered "dephlogisticated air", the gas now known as oxygen. He was a Unitarian minister, teacher, author, natural philosopher and, between 1773 and 1780, the librarian and literary companion of Lord Shelbourne. The earl built a laboratory at Bowood in which Priestley devised an experiment to focus the Sun's rays on to a sample of mercury oxide (HgO). This released a gas that, wrote Priestley, was "five or six times better than common air for the purpose of respiration, inflammation, and, I believe, every other use of common atmospherical air."
Credit: Christoffer Rudquist