Phosphorus brochure - Weir Minerals - #1

an element essential to the very existence

of every form of life on Earth, was first isolated by the German alchemist

Hennig Brandt in 1669. The name itself evokes

PHOSPHORUS

the sub­stance's property of spontaneous com­bustion in air, and is derived from the Greek for "Light-bringer" - the Morning Star (or Venus). Early agricultural societies exploited phosphatic materials unknowingly in such forms as bird droppings, bone, and ash. But it was not until 1842, with the development of wet process phosphoric acid technology by the Englishman John B. Lawes, that the modern chemical fertilizer industry could be founded.