Who discovered propyne(methylacetylene) and in what year? How did they discover methylacetylene.?

Answer 1

I'm not sure that it was discovered by a particular 'who'.

Petroleum has been ruining dug wells for thousands of years. And for thousands of years people have been using it for various purposes (see link 1). Much of the petroleum that bubbles up from the earth is a soup of dozens, if not hundreds, of hydrocarbons. Propyne included. So in a sense, people have been making some use of it for millennia.

Major oil production and refining came in the late 1800's, right around the time that chemists started getting their nomenclature together and started naming things consistently. Somewhere during that time, I'm sure, some chemist was hired by some refiner to figure out what exactly was in each fraction of the oil and what could be done with it.

Propyne, as I'm sure you know, is a major component in welding gas as well as a rocket fuel. Both these applications are something particular to much more recent history, however. Before that, I'm sure it was just mixed in with other gas products and not seen as being worth the effort of filtering out.

Answer 2

The discovery of methylacetylene would likely be done after Edmund Davy, a famous British chemist, made acetylene with potassium carbide and water. After Calcium carbide was made in an electric arc furnace, all the carbides must have been tested by everyone doing research since these can all be made the same way.

Barium carbide + water = acetylene
Calcium carbide + water = acetylene
Potassium carbide + water = acetylene
Sodium carbide + water = acetylene
Lithium carbide + water = acetylene
Aluminum carbide + water = methane

But Magnesium carbide + water makes methylacetylene

I think you should try to search British patents.