Vanadium Corporation of America

Beautifully engraved SPECIMEN certificate from the Vanadium Corporation of America. This historic document was printed by the Security Banknote Company and has an ornate border around it with a vignette of allegorical men and women. This item has the printed signatures of the Company’s President and Treasurer.
Certificate Vignette The Vanadium Corporation of America mined and milled vanadium and uranium. The company bacame part of Foote - Mineral in 1967. Vanadium is named after the Norse goddess Vanadis, the goddess of beauty and fertility who is also known as Freya (as in Friday - Freya's day). Vanadium was so named for its beautiful colors and to this day it is used as a dye in pottery and ceramics. Vanadium was first discovered by Andres Manuel del Rio in 1801, he was preparing salts from the material contained in "brown lead". Del Rio suspected he had discovered a new element and had intended to call it "Panchromium" (greek for many coloured) an appropriate name given that the various oxides of Vanadium are differently coloured. Unfortunately, a French chemist incorrectly declared that del Rio's new element was only impure Chromium. Del Rio thought himself to be mistaken and accepted the French chemist's statement. The element was rediscovered in 1830 by the Swedish chemist Nils Sefstrom who recognised that certain Swedish iron ores when smelted were more ductile and must contain an additional element which he identified and gave its present name - Vanadium. It was isolated in nearly pure form by an English professor Sir Henry Roscoe, in 1867, who reduced Vanadium chloride with hydrogen. Vanadium of high purity was not produced until 1925 when the American chemists John Wesley Marden and Malcolm N. Rich obtained it 99.7 percent pure by reduction of vanadium pentoxide, V2O5 with calcium metal. It was in the early part of the 20th century that Professor John Oliver of Sheffield College, England initiated studies into the effects of steel alloyed with Vanadium which lead to it's use today in high strength low allow steels. One of the early converts to the benefits of Vanadium alloys was Henry Ford. Ford examined a French car that had crashed in a race at Indianapolis he noted that the crankshaft produced with a Swedish steel containing Vanadium had resisted fracture, thereafter he used Vanadium steels in the famous "Model T" and other Ford cars. The first Vanadium to be commercially mined came from Peru where it occurs in a sulphide of Vanadium. This source was discovered in 1906 and remained a major source until 1955. From the beginning of the 20th century Vanadium had been found in the western United States in Uranium ores and for many years Vanadium was produced as a by-product by Uranium producers. Over the years Vanadium has been the by-product of many processes - from Lead and Zinc production in Namibia, from Bauxite residues in France, from iron ore in Norway and Finland. Vanadium is the 22nd most abundant element in the Earth's crust. Vanadium is found in about 152 different minerals among which are carnotite, roscoelite, vanadinite, and patronite, important sources of the metal. Vanadium is also found in phosphate rock and certain iron ores, and is present in some crude oils in the form of organic complexes. It is also found in small percentages in meteorites. Naturally occurring vanadium is a mixture of two isotopes, 50V (0.24%) and 51V (99.76%). 50V is slightly radioactive, having a half-life of > 3.9 x 1017 years. Nine other unstable isotopes are recognized. The above information is from http://www.vanadium.com.au.