1781,1783: Tungsten - The book of science

Tungsten
Atomic number 74
Hard stuff
Commentary

Uppsala, Bergara—Torbern Bergman, Juan José Elhuyar, Fausto Elhuyar elements

Tungsten

In 1781, Carl Wilhelm Scheele and Torbern Bergman
produced a new acid from calcium tungstate,
which was called tungsten
and is now called scheelite,
naming the acid tungstic acid,
and Bergman realized that the acid
was the oxide of a new element,
which he named tungsten,
in Swedish “heavy stone.”
In 1783, Juan José, a student of Bergman,
and his brother Fausto Elhuyar
found that wolframite contained tungstic acid
and reduced the acid to the metalic element,
which he named wolfram,
which means “wolf foam,”
after the mineral.
originally named by Georgius Agricola,
lupi spuma “wolf’s froth”
for it rose as a foam
during smelting of some tin ores
and so reduced the amount of tin
like a hungry wolf.

Atomic number 74

Tungsten carbide for cutting tools
cemented with cobalt,
tungsten for jewellery
cemented with nickel,
tungsten for high-speed steel
for rocket nozzles
for cutting metal at high speeds,
tungsten for heat-resisting steel
for engine valves and casings
and for turbine blades,
tungsten for plastic-mould steel,
tungsten for piercing bullets and shrapnel,
tungsten disulphide for high-temperature lubricants,
tungsten for incandescent bulb filaments
and fluorescent lighting electrodes,
tungsten for microwave oven magnetrons,
tungsten for the balls of ball-point pens,
tungsten oxides for ceramic glazes,
and tungsten for industrial catalysts.

Hard stuff

Heavier than lead,
hard and brittle when polycrystalline,
having the highest melting point,
and resistant to chemical attacks,
tungsten is used by some bacteria and archaea.
Metalic tungsten is safe but the powder is explosive
and some tungsten compounds are harmful to animal life.
You know what your mother would say about that.

The chemical symbol for tungsten is W, for wolfram, the name chosen by the Elhuyar brothers and used in Europe. The name tungsten was not preferred because that was the original name of the mineral scheelite, CaWO₄.