Nickel has got a unique name; it is the only metal named after a devil. Like cobalt, the word nickel comes from a German word ‘kupfernickel’, meaning ‘Old Nick’s copper’. This term too was used by German miners.
Their efforts to obtain copper from an ore that seemed copper ore did not meet with success. Instead of copper, all they could get was slag. The miners believed the devil or ‘Old Nick’ as they called him, was playing a trick on them and called it kupfernickel. Nickel was eventually discovered from this slag.
Nickel was discovered in 1751. Axel Fredrik Cronstedt of Sweden was attempting to extract copper from the mineral niccolite. To his surprise, he got a silvery-white metal, instead of the copper. He named the new metal nickel. But before all this, an alloy of copper, nickel and zinc was used in China as far back as 235 BC for utensils and other metal ware.
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