Atlantis' Legendary Metal Found in Shipwreck

[eppur_se_muova]

24. It's interesting to know what the effect of that nickel would be ...

If the result were a more durable metal, that might have been worthy of note. The ancients did not know of the separate existence of nickel, and were unable to extract the metal from its ores. Perhaps some ancient copper mine contained an admixture of nickel ore, or nickel ore was added to copper ore in the refining process at one location, without any recognition of its role as a source of the alloying metal.

Etymology and history

When, in the medieval German Erzgebirge, or Ore Mountains, a red mineral resembling copper-ore was found, the miners looking for copper could extract none from it, as it contains none; worse yet, the ore also sickened them. They blamed a mischievous sprite of German mythology, Nickel (similar to Old Nick) for besetting the copper (German: Kupfer): the mischievous Kupfernickel.[4] This German equivalent of "copper-nickel" was used as early as 1694 (other old German synonyms are Rotnickelkies and Arsennickel).

In 1751, Baron Axel Fredrik Cronstedt was attempting to extract copper from kupfernickel mineral, and obtained instead a white metal that he called after the spirit, nickel.[5]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickeline#Etymology_and_history