Group 12 element have zinc in its active site. In 1817, cadmium was discovered in Germany as an impurity in zinc carbonate minerals (calamine) by Friedrich Stromeyer and Karl Samuel Leberecht Hermann. It was named after the Latin "cadmia" for "calamine", a cadmium-bearing mixture of minerals, which was in turn named after the Greek mythological character, Κάδμος Cadmus, the founder of Thebes. Stromeyer eventually isolated cadmium metal by roasting and reduction of the sulfide. In 1927, the International Conference on Weights and Measures redefined the meter in terms of a red cadmium spectral line (1 m = 1,553,164.13 wavelengths). This definition has since
Christopher Schutz to mine and process the ore, being joined in some of their licences with Thomas Smythe, William Williams and Humfrey Cole. Only a few months later, in early 1566, William Humfrey and Schutz found calamine in the Mendip Hills, and Daniel Hoechstetter designed a refining process by which it could be used in Schutz' furnace at Tintern. As a reward for his work at Tintern, Schutz was granted denization on 9 April 1568, but the extraction of calamine ore at Worle Hill proved prohibitively expensive for the production of brass, and on 28 May the Company of Mineral and Battery