Tungsten General Electric's attempt to patent it, overturning granted in 1913 to William D. Coolidge. Tungsten Tungsten, or wolfram, is a chemical element with symbol W and atomic number 74. The name "tungsten" comes from the former Swedish name for the tungstate mineral "scheelite", "tung sten" or "heavy stone". Tungsten is a rare metal found naturally on Earth almost exclusively combined with other elements in chemical compounds rather than alone. It was identified as a new element in 1781 and first isolated as a metal in 1783. Its important ores include wolframite and scheelite. The free element is remarkable for its
Melting point being measured. The containment of the high melting material in the liquid state may introduce experimental difficulties. Melting temperatures of some refractory metals have thus been measured by observing the radiation from a black body cavity in solid metal specimens that were much longer than they were wide. To form such a cavity, a hole is drilled perpendicular to the long axis at the center of a rod of the material. These rods are then heated by passing a very large current through them, and the radiation emitted from the hole is observed with an optical pyrometer. The point of