brilliant young experimenter was expected almost to perform
miracles. And indeed he scarcely disappointed the expectation,
for with the aid of his battery he transformed so familiar a
substance as common potash into a metal which was not only so
light that it floated on water, but possessed the seemingly
miraculous property of bursting into flames as soon as it came in
contact with that fire-quenching liquid. If this were not a
miracle, it had for the popular eye all the appearance of the
miraculous.

What Davy really had done was to decompose the potash, which
hitherto had been supposed to be elementary, liberating its
oxygen, and thus isolating its metallic base, which he named
potassium. The same thing was done with soda, and the closely
similar metal sodium was discovered--metals of a unique type,
possessed of a strange avidity for oxygen, and capable of seizing
on it even when it is bound up in the molecules of water.
Considered as mere curiosities, these discoveries were
interesting, but aside from that they were of great theoretical
importance, because they showed the compound nature of some
familiar chemicals that had been regarded as elements. Several
other elementary earths met the same fate when subjected to the
electrical influence; the metals barium, calcium, and strontium
being thus discovered. Thereafter Davy always referred to the
supposed elementary substances (including oxygen, hydrogen, and
the rest) as "unde-compounded" bodies. These resist all present
efforts to decompose them, but how can one know what might not
happen were they subjected to an influence, perhaps some day to
be discovered, which exceeds the battery in power as the battery
exceeds the blowpipe?