Ancient Indians Used " zinc " 4000 Years Before

Zinc ores have been used to make brass (a mixture of copper and zinc) and other alloys since ancient times.

A zinc alloy comprising 87.5% zinc was discovered in an ancient site in Transylvania.
Zinc smelting began in the 12th century in India by reducing calamine (zinc carbonate, ZnCO₃) with wool and other organic materials.

The element name is reported to come from the old German word ‘zinke’ meaning pointed; a reference to the sharp pointed crystals formed after smelting.

Credit for isolating the metal is usually given to Andreas Marggraf in 1746, in Berlin. He heated a mixture of calamine ore and carbon in a closed vessel without copper to produce the metal.
 

Zinc was first recognised as a metal in its own right in India and the waste from a zinc smelter at Zawar, in Rajasthan, testifies to the large scale on which it was refined during the period 1100 to the 1500.

Zinc refining in China was carried out on a large scale by the 1500s. An East India Company ship which sank off the coast of Sweden in 1745 was carrying a cargo of Chinese zinc and analysis of reclaimed ingots showed them to be almost the pure metal.

In 1668, a Flemish metallurgist, P. Moras de Respour, reported the extraction of metallic zinc from zinc oxide, but as far as Europe was concerned zinc was discovered by the German chemist Andreas Marggraf in 1746, and indeed he was the first to recognise it as a new metal.

 

Origin of the                                      Name

The name is derived from the German, 'zinc', which may in turn be derived from the Persian word 'sing', meaning stone.

 

 

Group	12	Melting point	419.527°C, 787.149°F, 692.677 K
Period	4	Boiling point	907°C, 1665°F, 1180 K
Block	d	Density (g cm−3)	7.134
Atomic number	30	Relative atomic mass	65.38
State at 20°C	Solid	Key isotopes	64Zn
Electron configuration	[Ar] 3d104s2	CAS number	7440-66-6