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oa Platinum in the Eighteenth Century
A Further Spanish Contribution to an Understanding of its Discovery and Early Metallurgy
- Source: Platinum Metals Review, Volume 36, Issue 1, Jan 1992, p. 40 - 47
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- 01 Jan 1992
Abstract
It is generally accepted that the first description of “platina” to appear in Europe was by a young Spanish naval officer, Antonio de Ulloa, whose famous work “Relación del Viaje a la América Meridional” was published in 1748. Important though this was, of even greater significance was the fact that the primary metallurgy of platinum must have been established much earlier, enabling it to be extracted, purified and manufactured. These processes appear to have been kept secret from other European countries, and until recently their details had not been deduced. Now manuscripts discovered in the Colombian Archives enable known methods of purification to be linked to the description of the primitive manufacturing process.
© Johnson Matthey