Ancien régime: part 3

Lavoisier's wife often helped take notes in the laboratory and she was also an artist. She would sketch out the scenes of what was going on in the laboratory. Lavoisier was the tobacco inspector for the General Farm and he wanted to test for adulteration. He wanted to test for if there was ash in the tobacco. Ash in the tobacco could be bad because it could harm the people and it is tax fraud. Jacques Turgot took over as head of te General Farm. He did a great job and Lavoisier got along with him but after 29 years, Turgot got let go. The government was not able to pay back loans and people were counterfeiting and this made the general farm less effective. The French were making gunpowder at the time but there were taxes on every ingredient in making it. There was especially a high tax on salt. Lavoisier began to start programs that would make gunpowder. These programs became tests that all militaries would do in France and it would be a big experiment for all of them. Soon e nought, there was a gunpowder administration that would override all gunpowder projects and experiments. Lavoisier helped out with the administration and he felt comfortable working with them. He would wake up and spend 3 hours in the lab and then the rest of the day out and about with the gunpowder work.

Ancien régime: part 2

Lavoisier's father had accepted that his son wants to be a scientist and not work with law, like the rest of the family had done. In 1768, Lavoisier went to Paris and had two papers to present to the academy. One of the papers was written on the determination of the specific weights of liquids. The other paper was written on the character of the waters that he had visited while studying mineralogy. With the investments made by Lavoisier and the General Farm, he could have made a living off of the income of the profits made. Marriages in the eighteenth century were mostly because of the reason that they were business deals with the husband and the bride's father. Lavoisier got married in 1771 and the bride was 14 years old. His wife served him a a manager for his laboratory and General Farm work.

Ancien régime

“The Year One existed only in retrospect; no one experienced it directly." It wasn't until October of 1793 for the French monarchy to accept Lavoisier as a scientist and look at his work more carefully. The "le principe oxygine", as Lavoisier called it, helped put his permanent mark in the history of science. This principle was first started when Joseph Priestly called it fixed air. Then, Carl Wilhelm called it fire air. Finally, Lavoisier defined it as oxygen and it opened up all new context for which modern chemistry evolved. The French Monarchy started to collect taxes from people and made a company out of it. The company put a tax on salt, tobacco and alcohol, and goods imported to Paris from other places in France. The company was called the general farm and was abolished in 1791 because of mismanagement. Lavoisier ended up being a part of the general farm and turned a profit of 48 million current United States dollars. Antoine Lavoisier was born into a family of lawyers and robins. Lavoisier was the last of these and he preferred work over play. Lavoisier was following in his father's footsteps because he was going to the same college his father went to. He was also going to college for law. Lavoisier was not interested in law, so he studied literature. He got a second place prize in literature for an essay he wrote. Lavoisier's first real look at chemistry was “l’Abbé Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille”, a mathematician and astronomer. Lavoisier learned astronomy, calculus, and Newtonian physics from his teacher. Lavoisier left the college in 1761 and enrolled in a law school like his father would have wanted him to. His father always told him that science is something for leisure time, but never for a profession. Lavoisier was not interested in the law as he was in science. He started learning mineralogy when he went to the Paris law school. He also studied botany with Bernard de Jussieu. “In 1764 Lavoisier received his legal degree and was admitted to the Parlement de Paris." Antoine began working on project with street lighting for his academy. Lavoisier did his experimenting in a dark room and was awarded a gold medal for his studies.