Moreover, all the world is agreed, that from death to life there is no return. Yet the chemists assure us, if we moisten the calx of lead, and mix it with water in which samphire (salicot) has been dissolved, then, having dried it, put it in a crucible with a small vent, and heat strongly and quickly, that we shall reduce it to its original state.

The first authentic record on this subject (alchemy) is an edict of Diocletian, about 300 years after Christ, ordering a diligent search to be made in Egypt for all the ancient books which treated of the art of making gold and silver, that they might be consigned to the flames. This edict necessarily presumes a certain antiquity to the pursuit; and fabulous history has recorded Solomon, Pythagoras, and Hermes among its distinguished votaries.

Cardan is the first, who in his fifth book, De Subtilitate, says, that , by conversion into ceruse, or by , gains one-thirteenth part in weight, and gives this reason for it—The lead dies, for the celestial heart, which was its soul, vanishes; whose presence gives it life, and renders it light; as its absence occasions its death, and makes it heavy.

This opinion is defective, to say no worse of it, in many respects. First, in attributing life to lead. Secondly, in supposing that the presence of the celestial heat makes it light, and its absence heavy. Thirdly, because it assigns the same reason for the increased weight of lead by calcination, and of animals by death. There is nothing of the kind. For as to life, how can lead possess it, since it is a homogeneous body, without difference of parts, without organs, and without any vital effect or action? If it move downwards, so does ceruse, which is only its corpse; if it be cooling (rafraischit), so is ceruse. Then how could it preserve this life, under a million of forms, that it may be made to assume and to cast off, yet always continuing to be lead? How, in the furnace (which would be a much greater wonder), where it may be kept in fusion a day, a month, or a whole year? It must have a very tenacious soul to undergo so much without being dislodged!

I have heard that you have found the secret of engraving on copper on white ground, as Elsheimer did. To bite the plate with acid, he covered the copper with a white paste. He then drew with the point down to the metal, which is of reddish color, and it looked as if he were drawing with red crayon on white paper. I cannot remember the composition of this write paste, although he communicated it to me.

[L]ime is very important and it has been shown by [(1990) Professor D.D.] Klemm: "...in the VI. Dynasty lime disappears nearly within the mortars. May this be interpreted as a variation in the accessibility of fuel [of wood] and consequently of economic potential and crisis?" ...He was talking about the regular lime that is calcined from limestone in a kiln. ...[W]e have not found any remains of kilns... to manufacture the pyramids of Cheops and Chephren. We need... 150,000 tons of lime, which means that we should have found remains of kilns. We did not... which means that the technology was different. ...[I]t was the one of ashes that contains lime... The ecological disaster came from the over-exploitation of wood... proven by the fact that just after the Great Pyramids, one gets frescoes... describing famines...

Seekers after the glitter of intelligence are misguided in trying to cast it in the base metal of computing. There is an amusing epilogue to this analogy: in fact, the alchemists were right. Lead can be converted into gold by a particle accelerator hurling appropriate beams at lead targets. The AI visionaries may be right in the same way, and they are likely to be wrong in the same way.

Seven Steps To Creating an Effective Lead Magnet

I have now made the preparation; laid as it were the foundations of my answer to the Sieur Burn's [or Brun's] demand; namely, that having put two pounds six ounces of fine English tin into an iron vessel, and heated it strongly on an open fire for six hours, stirring it continually, without having added anything, he obtained two pounds thirteen ounces of a white ; which at first occasioned him great surprise, and the desire to ascertain whence these seven ounces of increase were derived.

Egyptian alchemists developed vibrant blue enamel... a by-product of copper . ...[A]n experimenter mixed a powder of with and applied a flame. The... hard, glossy blue enamel... was ...applied to beads and pebbles.

In one of his later volumes, Earth, book XXXV, Pliny tells the story of a goldsmith who brought an unusual dinner plate to the court of Emperor Tiberius.

The plate was a stunner, made from a new metal, very light, shiny, almost as bright as silver. The goldsmith claimed he'd extracted it from plain clay, using a secret technique, the formula known only to himself and the gods. Tiberius, though, was a little concerned. The emperor was one of Rome's great generals, a warmonger who conquered most of what is now Europe and amassed a fortune of gold and silver along the way. He was also a financial expert who knew the value of his treasure would seriously decline if people suddenly had access to a shiny new metal rarer than gold. "Therefore," recounts Pliny, "instead of giving the goldsmith the regard expected, he ordered him to be beheaded."

This shiny new metal was aluminum, and that beheading marked its loss to the world for nearly two millennia. It next reappeared during the early 1800s but was still rare enough to be considered the most valuable metal in the world. Napoléon III himself threw a banquet for the king of Siam where the honored guests were given aluminum utensils, while the others had to make do with gold.

Civilization begins with distillation

[Footnote] Livy informs us that Hannibal split the huge Alpine rocks with vinegar to break a path for the elephants. Vinegar was a high explosive in 218 B.C., but not before or since.

The blue dye indigo was obtained from the indigo plant by the Egyptians more than 4000 years ago. ...The famous and valuable "purple of Tyre" was perhaps first made in Crete in very early times... obtained at great cost... from tiny marine molluscs. ...The scarlet dye mentioned in the Bible was obtained from the kermes insect (hence the name "crimson").