History
In 1783 Carl Wilhelm Scheele discovered that gold dissolved in aqueous solutions of cyanide. He had earlier discovered cyanide salts. Through the work of Bagration (1844), Elsner (1846), and Faraday (1847), it was determined that each atom of gold requires two cyanide, i.e. the stoichiometry of the soluble compound. Cyanide was not applied to extraction of gold ores until 1887, when the MacArthur-Forrest Process was developed in Glasgow, Scotland by John Stewart MacArthur, funded by the brothers Dr Robert and Dr William Forrest. In 1896 Bodländer confirmed that oxygen was necessary, something that was doubted by MacArthur, and discovered that hydrogen peroxide was formed as an intermediate.
Read more about this topic: Gold Cyanidation
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Only the history of free peoples is worth our attention; the history of men under a despotism is merely a collection of anecdotes.”
—Sébastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort (1741–1794)
“The history is always the same the product is always different and the history interests more than the product. More, that is, more. Yes. But if the product was not different the history which is the same would not be more interesting.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“The steps toward the emancipation of women are first intellectual, then industrial, lastly legal and political. Great strides in the first two of these stages already have been made of millions of women who do not yet perceive that it is surely carrying them towards the last.”
—Ellen Battelle Dietrick, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 13, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)