Calamine brass Calamine brass Calamine brass is brass produced by a particular alloying technique using the zinc ore calamine directly, rather than first refining it to metallic zinc. Direct zinc smelting appears to have been unknown in Europe until the mid-18th century, even though the alloyed calamine brass was in use for centuries, and metallic zinc was produced directly via reducing-atmosphere smelting in India and China from the 12th century CE onwards. Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc and, when it was first developed, methods for producing metallic zinc were unknown. Metallurgists wishing to produce brass thus used calamine (actually
Period 3 element is referenced in the Bible as brimstone in English, with this name still used in several nonscientific terms. Sulfur was considered important enough to receive its own alchemical symbol. It was needed to make the best quality of black gunpowder, and the bright yellow powder was hypothesized by alchemists to contain some of the properties of gold, which they sought to synthesize from it. In 1777, Antoine Lavoisier helped convince the scientific community that sulfur was a basic element, rather than a compound. Elemental sulfur was once extracted from salt domes where it sometimes occurs in nearly pure form, but