Over the next 200 years, a great deal of knowledge about elements and compounds was gained.

By the
middle of the 19th century, about 60 elements had been discovered.

Scientists began to recognise patterns in the properties of these elements and set about developing
classification schemes.

1862

French geologist Alexandre-Emile Béguyer de Chancourtois listed the elements on paper tape and
wound them, spiral like, around a cylinder. Certain ‘threes’ of elements with similar properties came
together down the cylinder. He called his model the ‘telluric screw’.

1864

English chemist John Newlands noticed that, if the elements were arranged in order of atomic weight,
there was a periodic similarity every 8 elements. He proposed his ‘law of octaves’ on this.

1869

Lothar Meyer complied a periodic table of 56 elements based on a regular repeating pattern of physical
properties such as molar volume. Once again, the elements were arranged in order of increasing atomic
weights.

Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev produced a periodic table based on atomic weights but arranged
‘periodically’. Elements with similar properties appeared under each other. Gaps were left for yet to be
discovered elements.

1894

William Ramsay discovered the noble gases and realised that they represented a new group in the
periodic table

1914

Henry Moseley determined the atomic number of each of the known elements. He realised that, if the
elements were arranged in order of increasing atomic number rather than atomic weight, they gave a
better fit within the ‘periodic table’.

1940

Glenn Seaborg artificially produced heavy mass elements such as neptunium. These new elements were
part of a new block of the periodic table called ‘actinides’.
Law of octaves, in chemistry, the generalization made by the English chemist J.A.R. Newlands in 1865
that, if the chemical elements are arranged according to increasing atomic weight, those with similar
physical and chemical properties occur after each interval of seven elements. Newlands was one of the
first to detect a periodic pattern in the properties of the elements and anticipated later developments of
the periodic law

Octave

1.Music

a series of eight notes occupying the interval between (and including) two notes, one having
twice or half the frequency of vibration of the other.

the interval between the two notes at the extremes of an octave.

each of the two notes at the extremes of an octave.

the two notes at the extremes of an octave sounding together.

2. a poem or stanza of eight lines; an octet.