Cadmium in Germany, as an impurity in zinc carbonate. Stromeyer found the new element as an impurity in zinc carbonate (calamine), and, for 100 years, Germany remained the only important producer of the metal. The metal was named after the Latin word for calamine, because it was found in this zinc ore. Stromeyer noted that some impure samples of calamine changed color when heated but pure calamine did not. He was persistent in studying these results and eventually isolated cadmium metal by roasting and reducing the sulfide. The potential for cadmium yellow as pigment was recognized in the 1840s, but the
Group 3 element be reduced to their elements, meaning that the discovery of a new earth was equivalent to the discovery of the element within, which in this case would have been "yttrium". Until the early 1920s, the chemical symbol "Yt" was used for the element, after which "Y" came into common use. Yttrium metal was first isolated in 1828 when Friedrich Wöhler heated anhydrous yttrium(III) chloride with potassium to form metallic yttrium and potassium chloride. In 1869, Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev published his periodic table, which had empty spaces for elements directly above and under yttrium. Mendeleev made several predictions on the