Group 12 element people in the 17th century. German chemist Andreas Marggraf is usually given credit for discovering pure metallic zinc in a 1746 experiment by heating a mixture of calamine and charcoal in a closed vessel without copper to obtain a metal. Experiments on frogs by the Italian doctor Luigi Galvani in 1780 with brass paved the way for the discovery of electrical batteries, galvanization and cathodic protection. In 1880, Galvani's friend, Alessandro Volta, invented the Voltaic pile. The biological importance of zinc was not discovered until 1940 when carbonic anhydrase, an enzyme that scrubs carbon dioxide from blood, was shown to
Metallic fiber (steel wool), bundle drawn from larger diameter wire (smallest fiber is produced by this method), cast from molten metal, or grown around a seed (often carbon). Bundle drawn metal fiber can be produced to sizes smaller than one micrometre in diameter. Currently metallic fibers are manufactured primarily in Europe with only three manufacturers still producing metallic yarn in the United States. Metlon Corporation is one of the remaining manufacturers in the U.S. that stocks a wide variety of laminated and non-laminated metallic yarns & Brightex Corporation, Japan and South Korea, such as Hwa Young, is also manufacturing Metallic fibers. China