I'm at the Royal Society in London the
UK Academy of Sciences and I'm here
because there's a very interesting
document about the elements iridium and
osmium and to help me find them
there's the archivist Rupert who is
going to find these Rupert holding some
cards with the papers that are in the
archive by the discoverer of iridium and
osmium smithson tennant so we're going
down to the archive I never been there
before so I'm really excited we're down
in the archive and Rupert has got out
for us the paper that announces the
discovery of both iridium and osmium
that's two elements in one paper and
this is the manuscript this is what
smithson tennant actually wrote himself
and you will see he kept on changing his
mind and there's some examples where he
literally cut and pasted it so along
here and along there are the edges of a
piece of paper that has been glued on
top it's slightly different color and
he's used a different pen this is not so
historic I used to do this before I had
the word processor so that's why it's
called cut and paste so the title though
it doesn't really look a title it's more
an introduction upon making some
experiments last summer on the black
powder which remains after the solution
of platinum platinum is a platinum
containing material the element platinum
was already known I get a slight feeling
though it doesn't quite say that that he
wants it published before the French
published that this discovery he
describes here the experiments in quite
a lot of detail but unlike a modern
paper he doesn't have an experimental
section and as a recipe it sort of I did
this and then I did
and then I did the other without really
telling a story in the way the modern
scientist would which is quite fun in
itself but now if we turn over here so
here this is something I've never seen
before this is where somebody actually
chooses the name of an element so if you
look down here I should incline to call
you wouldn't write English quite like
that nowadays
this metal iridium here is the name
iridium and here he says from the
striking variety of colors which it
gives well dissolving in and I can't
read the name of the acid it could be
muriatic acid but there's a big splurge
here and so he called it because some of
you will have heard the English word
iridescent which you describe
butterflies wings which have lots of
different colors so he chose the name
iridium because of this number of colors
and I never knew that so this is the
first time that anybody ever wrote down
the word iridium now of course he might
have written it in his notes but this is
the first official record of anybody
writing the word iridium but then of
course he discovered two metals so we
turned over the page more cutting and
pasting so now I come to where he names
the other element osmium now here
clearly he thought of writing something
and made a big mistake because you can
see he's done a big cut and paste here
in which a lot of it's blank because
he's covering up something that he
didn't want to say if I was a real
historian I would be using an x-ray or
infrared camera to try and read what he
said before because that might be
interesting for the history of science
but let's read what he actually wrote he
describes how there is peculiar smell is
immediately perceived that means noticed
a rather strange smell now that's quite
surprising because osmium is the highest
melting point of any metal so it
shouldn't smell at all this mail as I
afterwards discovered arises from the
extrication that means coming out of Abe
he's made a mistake here he's written a
a very volatile metallic oxide that
means once that evaporates very easily
this smell is its most distinguishing
characteristic I should on that account
inclined to call the metal odd Miam here
is osmium and he's called this because
of the smell
now the reason he's chosen the name
osmium is because it is connected and
I'm not quite sure how with a Greek word
for smell and the oxide he was talking
about is oz mem tetroxide OS o for which
really does evaporate very easily and
it's intensely poisonous but once when I
was young I made a mistake and I did
smell it and it smells rather like
hydrochloric acid it's got quite a sort
of acidic smell but here they've chosen
the name because of the smell so here in
this document
you've got the reason why somebody chose
the name of two different elements and
they've used the real reason they've not
used the reason that it's named after a
famous scientist or something but
they've used a real property of the
metal either it's Melrose meme or its
variety of colors for iridium and I
think that's wonderful and you can see
here in this archive it's as if smithson
tennant a chemist who's been dead for
many many years he was born 250 years
ago is really talking to us we can hear
his voice speaking I chose the name for
these elements for these reasons
there's another document which is quite
an interesting little piece of
information about smithson tennant it's
about his death his sad death and
there's a letter here from the president
of the Royal Society or the then
president of the Royal Society's Sir
Joseph Banks you may have heard the
particulars of poor tenants death and it
appears that Tennant was in Calais in
France he'd been on holiday and he went
to Beloit and the wind for the sailing
boat was not in the right direction so
he went riding with a Frenchman and as
they were riding over a bridge the
bridge collapsed and he was squashed
under his horse and he lived for a few
days later but he died without ever
speaking again he has I fear carried his
discovery of and I can't read this word
but there's something of iodine away
with him so smithson tennant had a last
discovery and we never know what it was
because he died before he could write
the paper