History
 The history of tungsten goes back to the 17th century. The miners in the ErzMountains of Saxony noticed that certain ores disturbed the reduction of cassiterite (a tin mineral) and induced slagging. "They tear away the tin and devour it like a wolf devours a sheep", a contemporary wrote in the symbolic language of those times. The miners gave this annoying ore German nicknames like "wolfert" and "wolffram" (which means wolf froth).
In 1758, the Swedish chemist and mineralogist, Axel Fredrik Cronstedt, discovered and described an unusually heavy mineral that he called "tung-sten", which is Swedish for heavy stone. He was convinced that this mineral contained a new and, as yet undiscovered, element.
Carl Wilhelm Scheele
isolated tungsten
trioxide for the first
time in 1781. This
statuette by Carl Milles
is on view at
Millesgarden outside
Stockholm.It was not until 1781 that a fellow Swede, Carl Wilhelm Scheele, who worked as a pharmacist and private tutor in Uppsala and Köping, succeeded in isolating the oxide (tungsten trioxide). Torbern Bergman, working at Uppsala, predicted that the acid isolated by Scheele contains a new metal which should be possible to prepare by coal reduction. One year later, a Spanish nobleman, Don Juan Jose de Elhuyar, studied at the University of Uppsala under Bergman. He also met Scheele.
Back in Spain, Juan Jose and his brother Fausto de Elhuyar de Suvisa were the first in 1783 to prepare tungsten metal by the method suggested by Bergman. They named it wolfram.
Jöns Jacob Berzelius (1816) and later also Friedrich Wöhler (1824) described the oxides and bronzes of tungsten and proposed to use the name "wolfram" for the metal in favour to tungsten. While Wolfram established itself in Germany and Scandinavia, the Anglo-Saxon countries preferred Cronstedt’s "tungsten".
In 1821, K.C. von Leonhard proposed the name "Scheelite" for the mineral CaWO4.
In 1847, R. Oxland took out a patent for the manufacture of sodium tungstate and tungstic acid, which forms the starting point of the metallurgy of tungsten. He was the real founder of the tungsten chemistry.
The first attempts to produce tungsten steel with excellent results were made in 1855 (J. Jacob and F. Koeller; Reichraming steel works; Austria).
Further improvements in alloying and hardening of steels by tungsten were made late in the 19th century (Robert Mushet special steel; Boehler “Boreas”steel). Rapid growth and widespread application followed the invention, and the launch of high speed steels by Bethlehem Steel (F.W. Taylor and M. White) took place in 1900 at the Paris World Exhibition.
The second important breakthrough in tungsten applications was made by W. D. Coolidge in 1908/1909. Coolidge succeeded in preparing a ductile tungsten wire by thermomechanical processing. Metal powder was pressed to bars, sintered and forged to thin rods. Very thin wire was then drawn from these rods. This was the beginning of tungsten powder metallurgy, which was instrumental in the rapid development of the lamp industry.
The year 1923 is the next important milestone in the chronology of tungsten. It marks the invention of hardmetal (combining WC and Cobalt by liquid phase sintering) by K. Schröter and the corresponding application for a patent which was granted to Osram Studiengesellschaft in Berlin and licensed to Krupp in Essen in 1926. Nowadays, hardmetal (cemented carbide) is the main application for tungsten.
Presentation of WIDIA (hardmetal) at the 1927 Leipzig fair by Friedrich Krupp AG. A new material was born which revolutionised the tool industry.
This picture, published in 1944 in the Engineering & Mining Journal, illustrates the many applications of tungsten at that time. Now, some sixty years later, it would be impossible to update this illustration in the same style. Download a copy of the tungsten tree here
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