Cobalt - History

History

Cobalt compounds have been used for centuries to impart a rich blue color to glass, glazes and ceramics. Cobalt has been detected in Egyptian sculpture and Persian jewelry from the third millennium BC, in the ruins of Pompeii (destroyed in 79 AD), and in China dating from the Tang dynasty (618–907 AD) and the Ming dynasty (1368–1644 AD).

Cobalt has been used to color glass since the Bronze Age. The excavation of the Uluburun shipwreck yielded an ingot of blue glass, which was cast during the 14th century BC. Blue glass items from Egypt are colored with copper, iron, or cobalt. The oldest cobalt-colored glass was from the time of the Eighteenth dynasty in Egypt (1550–1292 BC). The location where the cobalt compounds were obtained is unknown.

The word cobalt is derived from the German kobalt, from kobold meaning "goblin", a superstitious term used for the ore of cobalt by miners. The first attempts at smelting these ores to produce metals such as copper or nickel failed, yielding simply powder (cobalt(II) oxide) instead. Also, because the primary ores of cobalt always contain arsenic, smelting the ore oxidized the arsenic content into the highly toxic and volatile arsenic oxide, which also decreased the reputation of the ore for the miners.

Swedish chemist Georg Brandt (1694–1768) is credited with discovering cobalt circa 1735, showing it to be a new previously unknown element different from bismuth and other traditional metals, and calling it a new "semi-metal." He was able to show that compounds of cobalt metal were the source of the blue color in glass, which previously had been attributed to the bismuth found with cobalt. Cobalt became the first metal to be discovered since the pre-historical period, during which all the known metals (iron, copper, silver, gold, zinc, mercury, tin, lead and bismuth) had no recorded discoverers.

During the 19th century, a significant part of the world's production of cobalt blue (a dye made with cobalt compounds and alumina) and smalt (cobalt glass powdered for use for pigment purposes in ceramics and painting) was carried out at the Norwegian Blaafarveværket. The first mines for the production of smalt in the 16th to 18th century were located in Norway, Sweden, Saxony and Hungary. With the discovery of cobalt ore in New Caledonia in 1864 the mining of cobalt in Europe declined. With the discovery of ore deposits in Ontario, Canada in 1904 and the discovery of even larger deposits in the Katanga Province in the Congo in 1914 the mining operations shifted again. With the Shaba conflict starting in 1978, the main source for cobalt, the copper mines of Katanga Province, nearly stopped their production. The impact on the world cobalt economy from this conflict was however smaller than expected. Cobalt being a rare and the pigment being highly toxic, the industry had already established effective ways for recycling cobalt materials and in some cases was able to change to cobalt-free alternatives.

In 1938, John Livingood and Glenn T. Seaborg discovered cobalt-60. This isotope was famously used at Columbia University in the 1950s to establish parity violation in radioactive beta decay.

After World War II, the US wanted to be sure it was never short of the ore needed for cobalt like the Germans were and went exploring for a supply within the US border. A good supply of the ore needed was found in Idaho near Blackbird canyon in the side of a mountain. The firm Calera Mining Company got production started at the site.