Online Encyclopedia

JOHN CANTON (1718-1772)

Online Encyclopedia
Originally appearing in Volume V05, Page 218 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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JOHN CANTON (1718-1772)  ,
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English natural philosopher, was born at
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Stroud, Gloucestershire, on the 31st of
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July 1718 . At the age of nineteen, he was articled for five years as clerk to the master of a school in Spital Square,
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London, with whom at the end of that time he entered into partnership . In 1750 he read a paper before the Royal Society on a method of making artificial magnets, which procured him election as a
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fellow of the society and the award of the Copley medal . He was the first in England to verify Benjamin Franklin's hypothesis of the identity of
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lightning and
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electricity, and he made several import- ant electrical discoveries . In 1762 and 1764 he published experiments in refutation of the decision of the Florentine Academy, at that time generally accepted, that
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water is incompressible; and in 1768 he described the preparation, by calcining
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oyster-shell with
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sulphur, of the phosphorescent material known as Canton's phosphorus . His investigations were carried on without any intermission of his
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work as a schoolmaster . He died in London on the 22nd of March 1772 .

End of Article: JOHN CANTON (1718-1772)
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