history of spectroscopy Historical Development of Flame Excitation Sources for Analytical Spectroscopy

In 1556 Georgius Agricola I wrote, in his De Re Metallica, about the "colour of fumes" from various types of ores. This may be the earliest record available in which the color of a flame-excited metal sample was used to identify a substance. If so, it represents the start of flame spectroscopy as an analytical tool. For several hundred years thereafter, development in this field was very slow. In 1704 Newton 2 made some observations concerning the nature of light and its colors. It was not until the 1800s, however, that new developments and improvements in methods and techniques became significant. It was during this century that the foundations of modern analytical spectroscopy were developed.