Two thousand years ago, the Chinese knew of a nickel-alloy, and nickel arsenide was mistaken for a copper ore by Saxon miners. The metal itself, however, was first isolated in 1751, by the Swedish chemist, Baron Axel Fredrik Cronstedt, who extracted it from an ore containing niccolite.
Platinum, too, has a long history, having been mistaken for silver by the ancient Egyptians, and used in jewellery in Ecuador before the Spanish conquest of 1534. It was first isolated by the English chemist, William Hyde Wollaston, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, having been brought to England by Charles Wood in 1741.
In 1803, Wollaston's study of platinum revealed a new element, palladium, a fellow platinum metal.
