In 1746 in Birmingham, England, John Roebuck began producing sulfuric acid in lead-lined chambers, which were stronger and less expensive and could be made much larger than the glass containers that had been used previously.
The process is highly exothermic, and a major consideration of the design of the chambers was to provide a way to dissipate the heat formed in the reactions.
The internal lead sheathing served to contain the corrosive sulfuric acid and to render the wooden chambers waterproof.
In the 1820s-1830s, French chemist Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac (simultaneously and likely in collaboration with William Gossage) realized that it is not the bulk of liquid determining the speed of reaction but the internal area of the chamber, so he redesigned the chambers as stoneware packed masonry cylinders, which was an early example of the packed bed.
The liberated nitric oxide is sparingly soluble in water, and returns to the gas in the chamber where it reacts with oxygen in the air to reform nitrogen dioxide.
At higher concentrations, nitrosylsulfuric acid precipitates upon the lead walls in the form of 'chamber crystals', and is no longer able to catalyze the oxidation reactions.