68 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



for even to-day Dumas says "of all analyses, that of platinum ore is, without 

 contradiction, the most difficult." 



In spite of the regal luxury of his laboratory, Chabaneau found at that 

 time in Madrid fewer resources than would to-day be offered by the most unpre- 

 tentious laboratory in France. Chabaneau was obliged to prepare his own 

 reagents and make his apparatus. Chemistry was still an empiric science and 

 Lavoisier had only just begun to bring order out of chaos. Further, at this time 

 no one could have suspected that in addition to gold, mercury, lead, copper, iron, 

 etc., the platinum ore contained five more metals, osmium, iridium, palladium, 

 rhodium and ruthenium, not discovered till 1803 and 1844. Chabaneau found 

 himself contending with six metals where he supposed there was only one, 

 platinum. Inevitable mistakes and innumerable disappointments naturally re- 

 sulted. He had proved that platinum was malleable, yet occasionally he found 

 it despairingly brittle (this was an alloy with iridium) ; he knew that it was 

 infusible, incombustible and unoxidizable, yet he was stupefied to see it at times 

 burn and volatilize (this was the alloy with osmium). 



The Marquess of Aranda, appreciating the great interest attaching to the 

 industrial use of a metal of which Spain possessed all the mines, came often to 

 Chabaneau 's laboratory, and often found him discouraged and busying himself 

 on other investigations. At such times Aranda, a most genial and lovable char- 

 acter, would console him, encourage him, and in the end bring him back to that 

 which Aranda considered his great task, the investigation of "white gold," as 

 it was then called. Chabaneau would take up with new zeal his tantalizing work, 

 and so passed days and nights, months and years. At last he succeeded in sur- 

 mounting all difficulties, his wearisome task was rewarded by the discovery of a 

 process by which the metal could be purified. The effectiveness of the method 

 was verified by several repetitions. The enchanted Marquess had him carry it 

 out on a large scale and came to the laboratory each day with increasing interest. 

 Judge of his astonishment and horror when one day he found Chabaneau in a 

 frenzy engaged in throwing out the door and windows his dishes, flasks and ores, 

 as well as all the solutions of platinum which he had prepared with so much 

 trouble and difficulty. 



The Castillian imperturbability of the Marquess only redoubled the French 

 fury of the young chemist. "Away with it all. I'll smash the whole business," 

 he cried in a mixture of French and the patois of P€rigord. "You shall never 

 again get me to touch the damned metal." And in fact he broke up all the 

 apparatus of the laboratory. 



Really this infantile fury was to some extent justifiable. No one knew then, 

 and indeed few know now, that lime does not precipitate platinum in artificial 

 light, but that in daylight the metal is completely precipitated by this reagent. 

 Chabaneau, working with lime at night, had been enabled to precipitate all the 

 other metals which were present in his solution, while his platinum was left 

 unprecipitated and purified. Repeating the operation by day, platinum and all 

 were thrown down, and he was completely at sea, without being able to suspect 

 the reason. 



Three months later, at the home of the Marquess of Aranda there appeared 

 upon a table an ingot some ten centimeters cube, with a beautiful metallic luster; 

 it was malleable platinum. The enthusiastic Marquess started to pick it up, but 

 failed to move it. "You are joking," said he to Chabaneau, "you have fastened 

 it down. " " No indeed, ' ' said the professor, and he raised the little ingot easily, 

 though it weighed some twenty-three kilograms. The Marquess had not thought 

 that the light platinum sponge would thus appear as the heaviest of all (then 

 known) metals. 



