described it as having a "quite characteristically suffocating
smell," which was very offensive. He very soon noted the
decolorizing or bleaching effects of this now product, finding
that it decolorized flowers, vegetables, and many other
substances.

Commercially this discovery of chlorine was of enormous
importance, and the practical application of this new chemical in
bleaching cloth soon supplanted the, old process of
crofting--that is, bleaching by spreading the cloth upon the
grass. But although Scheele first pointed out the bleaching
quality of his newly discovered gas, it was the French savant,
Berthollet, who, acting upon Scheele's discovery that the new gas
would decolorize vegetables and flowers, was led to suspect that
this property might be turned to account in destroying the color
of cloth. In 1785 he read a paper before the Academy of Sciences
of Paris, in which he showed that bleaching by chlorine was
entirely satisfactory, the color but not the substance of the
cloth being affected. He had experimented previously and found
that the chlorine gas was soluble in water and could thus be made
practically available for bleaching purposes. In 1786 James Watt
examined specimens of the bleached cloth made by Berthollet, and
upon his return to England first instituted the process of
practical bleaching. His process, however, was not entirely
satisfactory, and, after undergoing various modifications and
improvements, it was finally made thoroughly practicable by Mr.
Tennant, who hit upon a compound of chlorine and lime--the
chloride of lime--which was a comparatively cheap chemical
product, and answered the purpose better even than chlorine
itself.