Platinum

The use of platinum can be traced back to the ancient Egyptians and South Americans. News of the metal first reached Europe in 1726 when José Sánchez de la Torre y Armas, who was the assayer at the royal mint in Bogota, discovered that it was a new metal and not just a form of silver. Alluvial deposits in South America, and especially from the river Pinto, in Columbia, were rich in the metal, which was called platina del Pinto (silver of Pinto) from which platinum got its name.