William Gregor, an amateur mineralogist and chemist, first discovered ilmenite – some black sand containing one of the world’s lightest metals – in the UK in 1791. Four years later, this light metal was isolated and named “titanium” by a German chemist Martin Heinrich Klaproth. Titanium has comparable strength to steel, the world’s most used metal, but is about 56% as dense and 45% lighter. Pure titanium is very difficult to extract from ilmenite and so it took about 145 years before the metal became generally useful. Titanium alloys are made when controlled amounts of other elements – such as chromium, iron, vanadium, aluminium, nitrogen,…
Read More