text: French chemist Henri Moissan, formerly one of Frémys students, continued the search. After trying many different approaches, he built on Frémy and Gores earlier attempts by combining potassium bifluoride and hydrogen fluoride. The resultant solution conducted electricity. Moissan also constructed especially corrosion-resistant equipment: containers crafted from a mixture of platinum and iridium (more chemically resistant than pure platinum) with fluorite stoppers.
  After 74 years of effort by many chemists, on 26 June 1886, Moissan isolated elemental fluorine.  Moissans report to the French Academy of making fluorine showed appreciation for the feat:  "One can indeed make various hypotheses on the nature of the liberated gas; the simplest would be that we are in the presence of fluorine'."
  Moissan's 1887 publication documents reaction attempts of fluorine gas with several substances: sulfur (flames), hydrogen (explosion), carbon (no reaction), etc. Later, Moissan devised a less expensive apparatus for making fluorine: copper equipment coated with copper fluoride.
  Moissan also constructed special apparatus—5m long platinum tubes with fluorite windows—to determine the slight yellow color of fluorine gas. (The gas appears transparent in small tubes or when allowed to escape. The color observation was not repeated until the 1980s, when his result was confirmed.)
  In 1906, two months before his death, Moissan received the Nobel Prize in chemistry.  The citation: