Mining Journal’s Post

What connects antimony with alcohol, the printing press, the discovery of Australia and bullets? With Chinese export controls putting antimony back on the critical minerals map, I thought it would be interesting to look at the long human history of this metal Alcohol The ore stibnite, or antimony trisulfide, was widely used as eye makeup by the Ancient Egyptians. This black pigment was called "kuhla" in Aramaic, which became kohl in Arabic. Over time, "Al kohl" came to refer to any purified and concentrated substance. So when Europeans discovered a way of concentrating wine through distillation, they called it "alcohol of wine". The modern word alcohol is therefore the etymological descendent of the ancient Aramaic word for antimony. Printing The use of antimony in metallurgy was pioneered in medieval Europe. By including antimony in pewter alloys, a harder metal could be produced. This allowed for more detail and meant the pewter could be polished up to look like silver. In the 15th century when Johannes Gutenberg was developing the printing press, he needed an alloy suitable for making letter types out of, one with a low melting temperature but also hard and durable. The answer was antimony, which makes up 20-30% of early type metal alloys. Australia While antimony made the print revolution possible, it also drove the medical revolution. The Swiss alchemist Paracelsus was a particular advocate of antimony, along with mercury and arsenic. This sparked the so-called "Antimony wars" in the 17th century: a prolonged debate over the suitability of antimony as a medicine. One way of taking antimony was in the form of an antimonial pill. This was a pill-sized ball of antimony, which was swallowed, digested, excreted and, retrieved, then washed off of for re-use. A more agreeable way of taking antimony was the "antimonial cup". This was a drinking vessel made of pure antimony. This was filled with wine, which reacted with the metal to create antimony tartrate, which has an emetic effect when drunk. One of the only surviving examples is a cup owned by Captain James Cook, the discoverer of Australia, who may have used it in his ongoing anti-scurvy experiments. Bullets Antimony's ability to harden lead still has its uses. The deployment of expanding and deforming bullets in war is still banned by terms of the Hague Convention. At the time the convention was signed, this was meant to prevent the use of dum dum bullets, but the increased efficiency of propellants means that any pure lead bullet is now liable to deform and fragment on impact. As a result countries that adhere to the Hauge convention still use hardened bullets alloyed with antimony and tin, using metallurgical technology that would be familiar to the members of a medieval pewterers guild. https://lnkd.in/eSkzRDM9