Quantitative analysis involves measuring the proportions of known components in a mixture. Whereas qualitative analysis involves identifying what materials are present in a sample (quality), quantitative analysis involves determining how much of a material is present in a sample (quantity).

Chemists did not begin to use quantitative methods of analysis in earnest until the mid-eighteenth century. The development of chemistry into a science unto its own with robust theories and laws mirrored the introduction of quantitative analytical methods. Chemists could argue more strongly their views about the composition of substances when they could provide numbers and exact amounts. The two chief classes of quantitative analysis, gravimetric and volumetric, were developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The first quantitative analyses in the mid-eighteenth century were gravimetric. The experiments conducted with gravimetric techniques helped develop the theory of combustion, the law of chemical combination, and the concept...