Vergara, Spain/vergara198
Previous | Home | NextIn 1784 new shipments of platinum arrived at Vergara, and Chabaneau began collaborating with the Elhuyar brothers on the problem of preparing malleable platinum. Chabaneau was soon on his own, because the Elhuyar brothers were preoccupied in their preparations for their next calling by the Spanish King -- in 1786 Juan José was sent to New Granada {LINK: Columbia}, and Don Fausto was sent the same year to the mining school at Schemnitz (then Hungary, now Slovakia) {LINK:Schemnitz} to study amalgamation methods which he was to use in Mexico {LINK: Mexico842} two years later. Chabaneau was successful by 1786 in preparing a form of platinum that could be worked as other metals, instead of remaining a brittle powder. His process was ordered by the King to be kept secret; its details have only recently become known when a pamphlet published in 1862 came to light in 1914 .
