File talk:Manganese symbol (Bergman).svg

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@Kwamikagami: Is this a symbol of w:manganese, as the filename says, or of w:magnesium, as the description says? -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 23:59, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

@Tuvalkin: It would appear to be manganese. Bergman 1775, available on GBooks,[1] in the appendices under a list of metallic calces (p. 385), identifies 🝁 + this symbol as "manganese". (We have a reproduction here: , item #58 at bottom right.) So I'm not sure exactly what this symbol alone would be, but the 1911 EB identifies it as 'manganese'. You can see that in footnote 3 at the end of this page on WB. I don't know if magnesia/magnesium was an error I introduced, or if I copied from something on WP-en without checking. Bergman distinguishes manganese from magnesium, so I have no reason to think it would be both.

BTW, I checked the WP-en, WP-de and WP-fr articles that use this image, and the error is not reproduced there. Kwamikagami (talk) 00:44, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

Tuvalkin Oops, I take that back. B contrasts manganese and magnesia. He doesn't appear to mention magnesium. And on p. 123 he appears to purify manganese from magnesia, using arsenic acid. So that suggests he may not have distinguished the two elements (there was white and black magnesia). The WP-en article says that magnesium was only isolated in 1808. So I took out mention of Newton's supposed "magnesium" symbol. The Newton Chymistry Project[2] doesn't list a symbol for any of the magnesias. Kwamikagami (talk) 01:04, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

Bergman repeatedly refers to "magneſia nigra" – see this Google Books search, including: "The calx of manganeſe, known alſo by the name of magneſia nigra, furniſhes an admirable proof...". To believers in phlogiston, like Bergman, the calx was the true element, the metal only its "phlogisticated" (combined-with-phlogiston) form.– _•Raven  ^.talk 22:46, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Yes, but this symbol is not the calx -- that you get by combining this symbol with the symbol for calx. Kwamikagami (talk) 01:41, 25 April 2023 (UTC)