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In 1752 the French chemist Pierre Macquer made the important step of showing that a dye called Prussian blue could be converted to iron oxide plus a volatile component and that these could be used to reconstitute the dye. The new component was what we now know as hydrogen cyanide. Following Macquer's lead, it was first isolated from Prussian blue in pure form and characterized about 1783 by the Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele. In 1815 Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac deduced its chemical formula. The radical cyanide in hydrogen cyanide was given its name from the Greek word for blue, due to its derivation from Prussian blue.

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16y ago

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