Brass patented a technique for the first industrial scale distillation of metallic zinc known as "distillation per descencum" or "the English process." This local zinc was used in speltering and allowed greater control over the zinc content of brass and the production of high-zinc copper alloys which would have been difficult or impossible to produce using cementation, for use in expensive objects such as scientific instruments, clocks, brass buttons and costume jewellery. However Champion continued to use the cheaper calamine cementation method to produce lower-zinc brass and the archaeological remains of bee-hive shaped cementation furnaces have been identified at his works
Native metal more reactive than gold. Natural alloys of the platinum group metals include: native osmium (Os,Ir,Ru), rutheniridosmine (Ir,Os,Ru), ruthenium (Ru,Ir), palladium (Pd,Pt), platinum Pt, and rhodium (Rh,Pt). In addition gold, copper, iron, mercury, tin and lead may occur in alloys of this group. As with gold, salts and other compounds of the platinum group metals are rare; native platinum and related metals and alloys are the predominant minerals bearing these metals. These metals occur associated with ultramafic intrusions and placer deposits derived from those intrusions. Native copper has been historically mined as an early source of the metal. The term Old