Cobalt
2 June 2023
Cobalt is a hard, lustrous, silvery metal with atomic number 27 and the symbol Co. The element was first isolated by Georg Brandt in 1735, but its alloys have been known since antiquity. Long used in the production of blue pigments, today it has many uses, including in the production of lithium-ion batteries
Cobalt ores often also contain arsenic and other toxic materials, a fact that gives rise to its name, which is from the German kobalt or kobold, meaning goblin or demon because of the dangers the ore posed to miners. The German name spread to other European languages, and it appears in English as early as 1657 in a translation of a work by Paracelsus (Theophrastus von Hohenheim):
For at the first creation the four Elements lay hid in all things alike in the great mysterie: which things also were separated after the same manner and in one instant, and were divided among themselves one after another by a second separation, which is Elementary. And by this kind of Elementary separation out of the Element of the Earth things sensible and insensible, those that are eternall and those that are not eternall were parted from one another, every one obtaining its peculiar essence and free power. All that was of a woody nature was made wood. The next was mines of mettalls. A third became marcasite, talke, bisemute, pomegranate, mettallick cobalt, milsto, and many other things. A fourth precious stones of many sorts and shapes, as also stones, sands and lime. A fift was made into fruit, flowers, hearbs and seeds. A sixt into sensible living creatures, whereof some partake of eternity, as men, others doe not, as calves, sheep, &c.
Other early mentions in English include in a 1683 translation of Lazarus Ercker’s Fleta Minor:
Concerning the Cobolt oars, there are many sorts of them, some fresh and some milde, black and gray, some in trying do go easily into the Lead, but such Lead that comes by Ʋp-boyling from it, is black and red, and it afterwards doth work upon the Coppel, and dissolves, therefore it must after the first Ʋp-boyling, be cleansed again of its Wildness and must be slackd once more, so it will become white, and go clean off from the Coppel: One may also set the weightiest Cobolt Oar in a Test in the Oven, and let the smoak pass away, some of which sort do leave gray Ashes, and some a black grain upon the Test, and the rest will burn all away, but put a little Lead to it, and it will easily go in it, and also go clean off from the Coppel, and is found alike with the other Tryals.
And in John Woodward’s 1728 Fossils of All Kinds:
Cobaltum, a Marcasite frequent in Saxony. It is plentifully impregnated with Arsenic, contains Copper, and some Silver. G. Agricola […] and the rest of the Writers of Minerals take this for the Cadmia of the Antients. Being sublim’d, the Flores are of a blue colour. This the German Mineralists call Zaffir.
Sources:
Ercker, Lazarus. Fleta Minor. The Laws of Art and Nature in Knowing, Judging, Assaying, Fining, Refining and Inlarging the Bodies of Confin’d Metals. London: Thomas Dawks, 1683, 34–35. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Miśkowiec, Pawel. “Name Game: The Naming History of the Chemical Elements—Part 1—From Antiquity Till the End of 18th Century.” Foundations of Chemistry (online), 1 November 2022.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. cobalt, n.
Paracelsus (Theophrastus von Hohenheim). The First Book of Philosophy. In Croll, Oswald. Philosophy Reformed and Improved in Four Profound Tractates. H. Pinnell, trans. London: M.S. for Lodowick Lloyd, 1657, 14. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Woodward, John. Fossils of All Kinds. London: William Innys, 1728, 43n. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).
Photo credit: Heinrich Pniok, 2010. Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under a Creative Commons ‘Attribution-NonCommercial-NonDerivative 3.0 (US) license.
Source:
Oxford English Dictionary, cobalt, 2nd Edition, 1989.