Capillary Electrophoresis and its Basic Principles in Historical Retrospect Part 1. The Early Decades of the “Long Nineteenth Century”: The Voltaic Pile, and the Discovery of Electrolysis, Electrophoresis and Electroosmosis

Abstract

Here we set forth the first from a series of reports devoted to the history of capillary electrophoresis. In this opening part, we go more than two centuries back in time and revisit original discoveries of electrolysis, electrophoresis and electroosmosis. We emphasize the essential role of a brilliant invention of 1799 by Alessandro Volta, the Voltaic pile, basically the first battery delivering a constant-flow electricity, which has made all the scientific advances in the subsequent years and decades possible. We describe the experiments of William Nicholson and Anthony Carlisle revealing electrolytic decomposition of river water followed by enlightened investigations by Nicolas Gautherot, Ferdinand Frédéric Reuss and Robert Porrett that each independently and unaware of the works of the other uncovered the phenomena of electrophoresis and electroosmosis. We give not only a technical description and a chronological overview of the inventive experiments, but offer also some formidable details as well as circumstances surrounding some of the initial inventors and their observations. We conclude this time period, for which we coin the term "1st epoch of electrophoresis", with the same year 1914 as the coinciding period of European history termed the “Long 19th Century”, and accentuate the surprising fact that over this entire cycle of 125 years no attempts were taken to utilize the findings and newly acquired knowledge to perform an electric driven separation of compounds from a mixture. In the field of electrophoresis and electroosmosis, it is rather the epoch of pure than of applied science.