The 'water controversy' concerns one of the central discoveries of modern science, that water is not an element but rather a compound. The allocation of priority in this discovery was contentious in the 1780s and has occupied a number of 20th century historians. The matter is tied up with the larger issues of the so-called chemical revolution of the late eighteenth century. A case can be made for James Watt or Henry Cavendish or Antoine Lavoisier as having priority in the discovery depending upon precisely what the discovery is taken to consist of, however, neither the protagonists themselves...