CHABANEAU 67 



not only ingots of gold and silver, but also from time to time a mineral in the 

 form of little white metallic grains, infusible and very heavy. The miners found 

 it associated with gold and with diamonds (?) and called it platina, from its 

 similarity to silver (plata in Spanish). 



The government had no use for the platina and, fearing it might be used to 

 debase the coinage, ordered (ineffectually) that it should be buried when ex- 

 tracted from the ore. Meanwhile in 1741, an Englishman named Wood gave the 

 knowledge of platina to Europe; in 1750 Watson announced that it contained a 

 metal hitherto unknown; in 1752 Scheffer, director of the Stockholm mint, and 

 in 1754 Lewis in London, dispelled all doubt regarding the fact that a new metal 

 actually existed. Baron von Sickingen proposed a method for its extraction 

 from the ore. 



The new metal, platinum, thus obtained was in the form of a powder or 

 sponge, which resisted fusion, even in the most powerful furnace, and was thus 

 wholly useless in the arts. Chabaneau undertook the difficult task of obtaining 

 platinum in metallic ingots, in spite of its infusibility. He recognized that this 

 very infusibility would give great value to objects made of this new metal. 



Several other chemists of the time had busied themselves with this 

 same problem. The only hope of success appeared to be in alloying 

 platinum with other metals, but this seemed to present insurmountable 

 difficulties, owing in part to the impurity of the platinum ore, and also 

 to the large amount of other metals necessary for its solution. It was 

 early observed (von Sickingen says by Scheffer, who wrote in 1751) that 

 a small amount of metallic arsenic caused platinum to fuse easily, but 

 the ingot thus obtained was exceedingly brittle. Achard (1779) found 

 that by heating this alloy for a long time at a high temperature the 

 arsenic was gradually volatilized, leaving a mass of platinum in a malle- 

 able condition. While his communication to the Berlin Academy is 

 entitled "Leichte Methode, Gefasse aus Platina zu bereiten," it was 

 nearly ten years before practical application seems to have been made of 

 the method, and though a letter appears in Krells Annalen in 1790 stat- 

 ing that platinum vessels can be bought cheaply of Jeanty in Paris, they 

 were actually very rare and possibly never practically used until after 

 the close of the century. Achard's method seems, however, to have been 

 used industrially by Jeanty as late as 1820, though the method of 

 Chabaneau, rediscovered by Knight and possibly independently by Cock 

 also, came into general use in the first decade of the nineteenth century. 

 The vessels made by Achard's method could never have been satisfactory, 

 especially owing to the difficulty of completely removing the arsenic 

 from the platinum. 



Among the nobility who had interested themselves in the founding of the 

 college at Bergara was the Marquess of Aranda. This man (minister of state 

 and general, in 1787 ambassador to Paris) was distinguished among all the 

 nobles for his devotion to science. He held Chabaneau in high esteem and 

 encouraged him strongly in his projected work upon platinum. He had the gov- 

 ernment turn over its whole supply of platinum ore to Chabaneau, and furnished 

 him everything in his power for the laborious undertaking, Laborious indeed, 



