How Platinum Turned From Waste Into Precious Metal

The History Guy explored the fascinating journey of platinum, a precious metal once dismissed as useless waste by Spanish conquistadors in the 17th century.

Encountering the metal in the New World in the sixteenth century, Spanish conquistadors assumed that the metal was simply gold that hadn’t yet ripened- they gave it the derisive name “platina” meaning “little silver.”

He further notes that platinum, while historically difficult to work with due to its extraordinarily high melting point, has become the foundation of modern technology and jewelry, and a global symbol of value.

Once considered to be so worthless that it was literally thrown overboard into the ocean, today it’s the stop-of-the-line credit card. …Virtually every modern car has a few grams of platinum in the catalytic converter. Heart pacemakers almost always use platinum because it is durable, it doesn’t corrode easily, and it’s highly conductive, as the leads are used to keep people alive. And those same properties make it valuable for our future.