Combustion, fire, and flame have been observed and speculated about from earliest times.

Every civilization has had its own explanation for them. The Greeks interpreted combustion in terms of
philosophical doctrines, one of which was a certain “inflammable principle” was contained in all
combustible bodies and this principle escaped when body was burned to react with air. A generalization
of the concept was provided by the Phlogiston Theory, formulated in the 17 th century. Treated at first as
a purely metaphysical quality, Phlogiston was later conceived as a material substance having weight and,
sometimes, negative weight. The inadequacy of the Phlogiston Theory became apparent only in the late
18th century, when it proved unable to explain a host of new facts about combustion that were being
observed for the first time as the result of increasing accuracy in laboratory experiments.

The first approximation of the true nature of combustion was posited by French chemist
Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier: he discovered in 1772 that the products of burned sulfur or phosphorus—in
effect their ashes—outweighed the initial substances, and he postulated that the increased weight was
due to their having combined with air. Later, Lavoisier concluded that the “fixed” air that had combined
with the sulfur was identical to gas obtained by English chemist Joseph Priestley on heating the metallic
ash of mercury; that is, the “ashes” obtained when mercury was burned could be made to release the
gas with which the metal had combined. This gas was also identical to that described by Swedish
chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele as an active fraction of air that sustained combustion. Lavoisier called the
gas “oxygen.”

Lavoisier’s Theory that combustion was a reaction between the burning substance and the gas
oxygen, present only to a limited extent in the atmosphere, was based on scientific principles, the most
important of which was the law of conservation of matter (after Einstein’s relativity theory of matter and
energy): the total amount of matter in the universe is constant. Soon after, studies of gases by English
chemist John Dalton, and the first table of atomic weights that Dalton compiled, as well as many new
gases discovered by other scientists, were important in supporting not only Lavoisier’s Theory of
combustion but his whole new system of chemistry based on accurate measurements.

From 1815 to 1819, English chemist Sir Humphry Davy experimented on combustion, including
measurements of flame temperatures, investigations of the effect on flames of rarefied gases, and
dilution with various gases; he also discovered catalytic combustion-the oxidation of combustibles on a
catalytic surface accompanied by the release of heat but without flame.

Despite these discoveries, the materialistic theory of combustion lacked a clear concept of
energy and, therefore, of the critical role that energy considerations play in an accurate explanation of
combustion. It was American-born English chemist Sir Benjamin Thompson’s experiments with heat in
1798 that revealed evidence for the concept of heat as a movement of particles. Development of a
kinetic theory of gases, based on the premise that heat results from the motion of molecules and atoms,
of thermodynamics, and of thermochemistry, all in the 19th century, finally elucidated the energy
aspects of combustion.

In general terms, combustion is one of the most important of chemical reaction and may be
considered a culminating step in the oxidation of certain kinds of substances. Furthermore, most flames
have a section in their structure in which, instead of oxidations, reduction reaction occurs. Nevertheless,
the main event in combustion is often the combining of combustible material with oxygen.