1766 – Henry Cavendish publishes in "On Factitious Airs" a description of "dephlogisticated air" by reacting zinc metal with hydrochloric acid and isolates a gas 7 to 11 times lighter than air.
1784 – Jean-Pierre Blanchard attempts a dirigible hydrogen balloon, but it was unable to steer.
1784 – The invention of the Lavoisier Meusnier iron-steam process,[1] generating hydrogen by passing water vapor over a bed of red-hot iron at 600 °C.[2]
1785 – Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier builds the hybrid Rozière balloon.
1787 – Louis-Bernard Guyton de Morveau and others give hydrogen its name (Gk: hydro = water, -genes = born of).
1787 – Charles's law (gas law, relating volume and temperature).
1789 – Jan Rudolph Deiman and Adriaan Paets van Troostwijk use an electrostatic machine and a Leyden jar for the first electrolysis of water.
1873 – Thaddeus S. C. Lowe – water gas; the process uses the water gas shift reaction.
1874 – Jules Verne – The Mysterious Island: "Yes, my friends, I believe that water will one day be employed as fuel, that hydrogen and oxygen which constitute it, used singly or together, will furnish an inexhaustible source of heat and light, of an intensity of which coal is not capable."[8]
1884 – Charles Renard and Arthur Constantin Krebs launch the airshipLa France.
1885 – Zygmunt Florenty Wróblewski publishes hydrogen's critical temperature as 33 K; critical pressure, 13.3 atmospheres; and boiling point, 23 K.
1889 – Ludwig Mond and Carl Langer coin the name fuel cell and try to build one running on air and Mond gas.
1893 – Friedrich Wilhelm Ostwald experimentally determines the interconnected roles of the various components of the fuel cell.
1912 – The first scheduled international Zeppelin passenger flights with the Zeppelin LZ13.
1913 – Niels Bohr explains the Rydberg formula for the spectrum of hydrogen by imposing a quantization condition on classical orbits of the electron in hydrogen.
1919 – The first Atlantic crossing by airship with the Beardmore HMA R34.
1920 – Hydrocracking, a plant for the commercial hydrogenation of brown coal is commissioned at Leuna in Germany.[11]
1923 – Steam reforming, the first synthetic methanol is produced by BASF in Leuna.
1923 – J. B. S. Haldane envisions in Daedalus; or, Science and the Future "great power stations where during windy weather the surplus power will be used for the electrolytic decomposition of water into oxygen and hydrogen".
1929 – Paul Harteck and Karl Friedrich Bonhoeffer achieve the first synthesis of pure parahydrogen.
1929 – The hydrogen-filled LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin makes a 33,234 km (20,651 mi; 17,945 nmi) circumnavigation of the world. It is the first and only airship to do so, and the second circumnavigation of the globe by air. The voyage took a total of 21 days, 5 hours, and 31 minutes.
1930 – Rudolf Erren – Erren engine – patent CH148238A – Improvements in and relating to internal combustion engines using a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen as fuel.[12]
1939 – Rudolf Erren – Erren engine – US patent 2,183,674 – Internal combustion engine using hydrogen as fuel.
1939 – Hans Gaffron discovers that algae can switch between producing oxygen and hydrogen.
1941 – The first mass application of hydrogen in internal combustion engines: Russian lieutenant Boris Shelishch in the besieged Leningrad converts some hundreds cars "GAZ-AA" which serve posts of barrage balloons of air defense.
1955 – W. Thomas Grubb modifies the fuel cell design by using a sulphonated polystyrene ion-exchange membrane as the electrolyte.
1957 – Pratt & Whitney's model 304 jet engine using liquid hydrogen as fuel tested for the first time as part of the Lockheed CL-400 Suntan project.[15]
Parts of this physics (those related to section) need to be updated. Please update this physics to reflect recent events or newly available information. (September 2020)
2013 – The first commercial 2 megawatt power to gas installation in Falkenhagen comes online for 360 cubic meters of hydrogen per hour hydrogen storage into the natural gas grid.[25]
2021 – Enapter, co-founded by Vaitea Cowan, is awarded the 2021 Earthshot Prize for the ‘Fix our Climate’ category for its AEM Electrolyser technology, which turns renewable electricity into emission-free hydrogen gas.[29]RAF gains Guinness World Record for the first successful flight powered by synthetic fuel produced from green hydrogen generated by EMEC in Orkney.
2022 – Researchers in Cambridge develop floating artificial leaves for light-driven hydrogen production. The lightweight, flexible devices are scalable and can float on water similar to lotus leaves.[30]
2023 – Toyota's liquid hydrogen powered Corolla participates in the Super Taikyu Fuji 24 Hours Race where it beats gaseous hydrogen powered Corolla's previous record by completing 358 laps (1,634 km).[31]
2024 – NREL begins research on megawatt-scale hydrogen systems and launches the roll-to-roll consortium to start high-volume manufacturing of electrolyzers and hydrogen fuel cells. [32]
See also
Timeline of sustainable energy research 2020–present
↑Langins, Janis (8 Jun 1983). "Hydrogen production for ballooning during the French Revolution: An early example of chemical process development". Annals of Science (Taylor & Francis) 40 (6): 531–558. doi:10.1080/00033798300200381.