"Cavendish proceeded to try whether free oxygen, if detonated with hydrogen, would in like manner yield water. ... [I]t was only necessary to fill the globe with a mixture of one volume of oxygen and two of hydrogen, and to explode it by the electric spark, to secure the entire conversion of the contents of the globe into water. Cavendish came as near this result, as a slight mistake in the adjustment of the combining volumes of hydrogen and oxygen, and the limits of error in such an experiment, at the period when it was made... permitted."