Ever stare at that giant grid of elements pinned to your old high school chemistry classroom wall and wonder who first thought to line them up that way? His name isn't the one everyone memorizes. Most people blurt out Dmitri Mendeleev, right? But here's the thing — the scientist who first attempted to construct a periodic table didn't even get the credit for decades. That feels unfair, doesn't it?
Turns out, the history of the periodic table is full of people who got there early but got ignored. We love a clean narrative: one guy sits down, arranges all the elements, predicts the missing ones, gets a spot in every textbook. Real history is messier. It's got rejected papers, forgotten journals, and a French geologist most people have never heard of But it adds up..
What Is the First Attempt to Construct a Periodic Table?
You can't talk about the first attempt to construct a periodic table without starting with Alexandre-Emile Béguyer de Chancourtois. Back then, chemists had identified around 60 elements, but no one had figured out a good way to sort them. He wasn't even a chemist, really — he was a mineralogist and geologist working in France in the mid-1800s. They knew some elements acted alike — sodium and potassium were both reactive metals, chlorine and fluorine were both reactive gases — but no one had mapped out why.
Who Was Alexandre-Emile Béguyer de Chancourtois?
Born in 1820, de Chancourtois spent most of his career as a professor at the École des Mines in Paris, specializing in mineral composition. He wasn't trying to revolutionize chemistry when he started sorting elements. He was trying to figure out why certain minerals only formed with specific combinations of elements. That practical, geology-first approach is exactly why his work flew under the radar for so long — he wasn't writing for chemists, he was writing for other geologists Simple, but easy to overlook..
What Was the Telluric Screw?
De Chancourtois was the first person to line all known elements up by their atomic weight, a measurement that had only become reliable a few years prior. He didn't just list them in a flat row, though. He wrapped that list around a metal cylinder with a circumference of 16 units — the atomic weight of oxygen, which was the standard baseline at the time. Every time an element's atomic weight increased by 16, it landed on the same vertical line on the cylinder But it adds up..
He called this the vis tellurique, or telluric screw, because tellurium (atomic weight ~128) landed squarely on one of the vertical lines where elements with similar properties clustered. Think about it: the pattern was clear: sort by weight, and similar elements repeat at regular intervals. Practically speaking, oxygen, sulfur, selenium, and tellurium all lined up together. So did lithium, sodium, potassium, and rubidium. That's periodicity, the core concept of the entire periodic table, identified for the first time in 1862 Less friction, more output..
The biggest problem? Day to day, when de Chancourtois published his work in a French geology journal in 1863, the editors didn't include the diagram of the screw. They only printed a written description, which most chemists couldn't visualize. His work was basically forgotten for 30 years.
Why It Matters / Why People Care
Most people think science moves in a straight line: one discovery builds on the next, credit goes to the person who got it right. When we only teach Mendeleev, we miss the decades of work that came before him. That's not how it works. We miss the fact that the periodic table wasn't a sudden breakthrough — it was a slow, messy process with lots of people chipping away at the problem.
Why does this matter? He read the work of de Chancourtois and Newlands, even if he didn't cite them publicly at first. If we only remember the winner, we forget how science actually gets done. Mendeleev didn't pull the periodic table out of thin air. He built on what they did. Because it changes how you think about scientific credit. It's a cumulative effort, even if only one name makes it to the textbook.
It also matters for how we teach chemistry. If you're a student, knowing that the first attempt was a 3D screw, not a flat grid, helps you understand why the periodic table is arranged the way it is. Worth adding: the vertical groups aren't arbitrary. Which means they exist because de Chancourtois noticed those elements lined up on his screw. The horizontal periods exist because of the atomic weight order he set. I know it sounds simple — but that context makes the table way easier to remember than just memorizing a grid of letters.
How It Works
The first attempt at a periodic table worked because de Chancourtois leaned into a new measurement that most chemists were still skeptical of: atomic weight. Before the mid-1800s, atomic weights were all over the map, since no one had standardized how to measure them. By the 1860s, that had changed, and de Chancourtois was one of the first to use that data to sort elements systematically That alone is useful..
How De Chancourtois Sorted the Elements
Before his work, most element sorting was based on surface-level properties: metals vs. nonmetals, solids vs. liquids vs. gases. That created messy, overlapping categories with no clear order. De Chancourtois threw that out. He listed every known element from lightest to heaviest by atomic weight, no exceptions. He even included some substances that turned out not to be elements (like didymium, which was later split into neodymium and praseodymium) because the data at the time said they were pure elements.
The Atomic Weight Breakthrough
The real magic here was periodicity. De Chancourtois didn't just sort elements by weight — he noticed that elements with similar chemical properties showed up at regular intervals as the weight increased. Take this: the reactive alkali metals (lithium, sodium, potassium) each landed on the same vertical line of his screw, spaced roughly 16 atomic weight units apart. The halogens (fluorine, chlorine, bromine) did the same. He was the first person to document that pattern, even if he didn't call it periodicity yet.
Why His Table Was Different
Unlike Mendeleev's later table, de Chancourtois's didn't leave gaps for undiscovered elements. He included every known substance he thought was an element, even if it didn't quite fit the pattern. He also didn't group elements by valence (how many electrons they gain or lose in reactions) — that concept didn't become standard until later. But the core framework was there: weight-based sorting, repeating properties, vertical groups of similar elements.
John Newlands and the Law of Octaves
Two years after de Chancourtois published his screw, British chemist John Newlands took the next step. He arranged elements by atomic weight and noticed that every eighth element had nearly identical properties, just like octaves in music. He called this the Law of Octaves and presented it to the Chemical Society of London in 1864. They laughed at him. Literally — one member asked if he'd ever tried arranging the elements alphabetically to see if that produced a pattern. Newlands's work was rejected, and it didn't get published until 1870, a year after Mendeleev's table debuted. He was close, but he was second. The first attempt belonged to de Chancourtois Not complicated — just consistent..
Common Mistakes / What Most People Get Wrong
Honestly, this is the part most guides get wrong. They either say Mendeleev was the first to arrange elements periodically, or they mention Newlands but skip de Chancourtois entirely. Here are the other big mistakes people make:
First: Thinking the first periodic table was a 2D grid. That's why the grid format we use today didn't exist until Mendeleev, and even his first table was a bit lopsided. On top of that, it wasn't. The very first attempt was a 3D cylinder, which is way harder to visualize, so it gets left out of most textbooks It's one of those things that adds up..
Second: Thinking de Chancourtois's work was inaccurate. It wasn't. He used the best atomic weight data available at the time, and his periodicity pattern held up for every element he included. Day to day, the only reason it seems messy now is that we've discovered way more elements, and we use atomic number instead of weight to sort them. His core idea was 100% correct Worth keeping that in mind..
Third: Thinking Mendeleev had no idea earlier attempts existed. Still, he did. He later admitted to reading both de Chancourtois's and Newlands's work, even if he didn't cite them in his first paper. Consider this: credit usually goes to the person who makes a discovery useful, not just the first person to stumble on it. Mendeleev left gaps for missing elements, predicted their properties (like gallium and germanium, which were discovered years later), and published in a chemistry journal chemists actually read. That's why he's the one we remember Simple, but easy to overlook..
Fourth: Confusing "first attempt" with "first accurate table". That's why de Chancourtois was first, but Mendeleev's table was more accurate and useful. They're not the same thing.
Practical Tips / What Actually Works
Forget generic advice like "study the timeline" — here's what actually works if you want to remember this stuff:
If you're a student cramming for a chemistry exam, use this mnemonic: De Chancourtois (French, 1862) → Newlands (British, 1864) → Mendeleev (Russian, 1869) → Moseley (British, 1913, switched to atomic number). The dates are 2 years apart at first, then 5, then 44. That's easy to lock in.
If you're a teacher, don't just put Mendeleev's picture on the board. And print out a diagram of the telluric screw, pass it around, ask your students to imagine how hard it would be to work with a 3D table before computers. They'll care way more about the periodic table if they know it has a weird, messy backstory That alone is useful..
If you're just a curious person who likes science history, look up de Chancourtois's original 1863 paper (there are free translations online). Consider this: it's wild to see how close he was with so little data. He didn't have noble gases, he didn't have the actinides, but he still saw the pattern that underpins all of modern chemistry Worth keeping that in mind..
And here's a tip most people miss: The next time someone says Mendeleev invented the periodic table, you can politely correct them. But tell them about the French geologist with the screw. It's a great conversation starter, and it's factually correct.
FAQ
Who was the first scientist to attempt to construct a periodic table? Alexandre-Emile Béguyer de Chancourtois, a French geologist, created the telluric screw in 1862, arranging elements by atomic weight and identifying periodicity for the first time.
Why isn't de Chancourtois as famous as Mendeleev? His work was published in a geology journal without diagrams, so most chemists never saw it. He also didn't leave gaps for undiscovered elements or predict their properties, which made his table less useful than Mendeleev's.
Was John Newlands the first to make a periodic table? No. Newlands proposed the Law of Octaves in 1864, two years after de Chancourtois's telluric screw. He was the second person to arrange elements periodically, not the first Less friction, more output..
What is the telluric screw? A 3D periodic table created by de Chancourtois where elements were wrapped around a cylinder spaced by atomic weight, so elements with similar properties lined up vertically.
Did Mendeleev steal his idea from earlier scientists? Not steal, no. He built on existing work, which is how all science works. He just added the critical step of leaving gaps for undiscovered elements, which made his table provably accurate.
The next time you glance at a periodic table, take a second to think about the French geologist rolling elements around a cylinder in a Paris lab, or the British chemist getting laughed at for comparing elements to musical notes. Science isn't just the stuff in textbooks. It's the messy, forgotten work of people who got there early, even if they didn't get the credit. That's worth remembering.
This changes depending on context. Keep that in mind.
