Razor of platinum steel, presented by Michael Faraday to T.F. Barnard

Interest in platinum dates from the middle of the eighteenth century when it was discovered in nature in the form of small grains. Attempts to melt these grains failed because the available furnaces could not provide a high enough temperature. At the end of the eighteenth century William Hyde Wollaston discovered that malleable pieces of platinum could be made by pressing powdered platinum into blocks, heating them in a coke furnace, and then striking them hot with a heavy hammer. From these beginnings powder metallurgy developed.