This paper reviews the use and relation of the word ‘ptène’ to osmium. While Smithson Tennant discovered osmium in platinum ore in 1804, the French chemists Antoine-François Fourcroy and Nicolas-Louis Vauquelin simultaneously identified in a platinum residue a metal they called ‘ptène’. This name was most probably attributed to a mixture of platinoids (excluding platinum), mainly osmium and iridium. Nevertheless, Fourcroy later considered that ‘ptène’ was the name they attributed to osmium.
The post Osmium