Impurities greatly modify this colour, small quantities of silver lowering the tint, while copper raises it. It is the only metal which has a yellow colour when in mass and in a state of purity. The word “gold” is probably connected with the Sanscrit word “jvalita” which is derived from the verb “jval,” to shine. The lustre and fine colour of gold have given rise to most of the words which are used to denote it in different languages.
Gold has doubtless been the cause of many of the wars and marauding expeditions from which the world has suffered, but on the other hand it has been instrumental, in a far greater degree than most other commodities, in promoting the growth of civilisation, the efforts of the alchemists having laid the foundations of the science of chemistry, and those of the gold-seekers having resulted in the discovery of new countries, and in the spread of knowledge of all kinds. At the end of this period, while Paracelsus was giving to chemistry a new aim-that of investigating the composition of drugs, and their effect on the human body-Agricola was reducing to order the numerous empirical facts which together made up the art of metallurgy, and although alchemy died hard, its era of usefulness may be said to have ended here. From the fourth to the fifteenth century, chemistry, which was first called “chemia” (xnµeia), and then “alchemy,” was defined as the art of transmuting base metals into gold and silver, almost all the labours of philosophers being intended to aid directly or indirectly in solving this problem. In the history of gold, it is also of interest to the metallurgist to remember that the earliest dawn of the science of chemistry was heralded by the study of the properties of gold, and by the efforts which were made to invest other matters with these properties. The ease with which gold-amalgam can be collected, in spite of its being less dense than gold itself, is due to the fact that it is wetted by mercury. Hides are even now occasionally employed to catch the gold, but sheep’s wool, when used, is generally in the form of blankets.Īt the present day, however, when auriferous sands are washed, the aid also is invoked of what Baron Born called in 1786 the “elective affinity” of mercury for gold when mixed with impurities. Metallurgists are almost proverbially conservative in their methods. Similar expeditions have not been unknown in much later times, and the method of obtaining gold by washing river sand is still practised, with improvements in matters of detail, in many parts of the world. to win gold, which was being laboriously obtained from streams with the help of sheepskins or goatskins by the inhabitants of what is now Armenia. Stripped of its heroic dress, this legend merely describes a successful piratical expedition about 1200 B.C. Among the hides used were sheepskins, and hence originated the form of the legend of the Golden Fleece. In order to collect alluvial gold, the sands were washed down over smooth sloping rocks by means of running water, and the particles of gold, sinking to the bottom of the stream by reason of their high density, were entangled and caught in the hair of raw hides spread on the rocks. However, in ancient times gold appears to have been mainly derived from India, and that country continued to supply most of the gold used in Europe until the discovery of America by Columbus.
The earliest of these carvings is supposed to date back to about 2500 B.C. Among the rock carvings of Upper Egypt there are several illustrative of the art of washing auriferous sands by stirring and working them up by the hand in hollowed-out stone basins, and subsequently melting the gold in simple furnaces with the aid of mouth blow-pipes. It is, indeed, probable that gold was the first metal observed and collected, since it occurs in fragments of all sizes in loose sand, and the operations of collecting the larger pieces and melting them together are so simple. or about 2000 years before Moses, the ratio of value between gold and silver is mentioned, one part of gold being declared equal in value to two and a half parts of silver, and it is, therefore, clear that the extraction of both metals from the deposits containing them must have been carried on before that time.
#DENSITY OF GOLD CODE#
In the code of Menes, who reigned in Egypt in 3600 B.C. What is the Atomic Weight and Volume of Goldįrom very early times the ancients were attracted by the beautiful colour, the brilliant lustre, and the indestructibility of gold, and spared no pains in the endeavour to acquire it.
0 kommentar(er)
