In 1868 two articles appeared in Annalen der Chemie und Pharmacie on “a new series of homologues of hydrogen cyanide.” In the first article A. W. Hofmann(1) reported on an extension of his earlier work(2) in which he described the formation of isomers of nitriles in a reaction between a primary amine, chloroform, and alcoholic potassium hydroxide. In the second article Gautier(3) reported on the synthesis of a series of compounds, hinted at in an article of his in 1867,(4) and apparently identical to Hofmann’s. Gautier, however, obtained these compounds in a different way, namely, in a reaction between an alkyl iodide and silver cyanide. Thus isocyanide chemistry was born,(5,6) although in the preceding decade several chemists, trying to prepare alkyl cyanides from alkyl iodides and silver cyanide, had isolated considerable amounts of substances with a horrifying odor.