be possible to obtain a new metal by reducing this acid. In 1783, José and Fausto Elhuyar found an acid made from wolframite that was identical to tungstic acid. Later that year, at the Royal Basque Society in the town of Bergara, Spain, the brothers succeeded in isolating tungsten by reduction of this acid with charcoal, and they are credited with the discovery of the element (they called it "wolfram" or "volfram"). The strategic value of tungsten came to notice in the early 20th century. British authorities acted in 1912 to free the Carrock mine from the German owned Cumbrian Mining Company and, during World War I, restrict German access elsewhere. In World War II, tungsten played a more significant role in background political dealings. Portugal, as the main European source of the element, was put under pressure from both sides, because of its deposits of wolframite ore at Panasqueira. Tungsten's desirable properties such as resistance to high temperatures, its hardness and density, and its strengthening of alloys made it an important raw material for the arms industry, both as a constituent of weapons and equipment and employed in production itself, e.g., in tungsten carbide cutting tools for machining steel. Now tungsten is used in many more applications such as aircraft & motorsport ballast weights, darts, anti-vibration tooling, and sporting equipment. Tungsten is unique amongst the elements in that it has been the subject of patent proceedings. In 1928, a US court rejected General Electric's attempt to patent it, overturning granted in 1913 to William D. Coolidge. Etymology The name "tungsten" (which means "heavy stone" in Swedish and was the old Swedish name for the mineral scheelite and other minerals of similar density) is used in English, French, and many other languages as the name of the element, but "wolfram" (or "volfram") is used in most European (especially Germanic, Spanish and Slavic) languages and is derived from the mineral wolframite, which is the origin of the chemical symbol W. The name "wolframite" is derived from German "wolf rahm" ("wolf soot" or "wolf cream"), the name given to tungsten by Johan Gottschalk Wallerius in 1747. This, in turn, derives from Latin "lupi spuma", the name Georg Agricola used for the element in 1546, which translates into English as "wolf's froth" and is a reference to the large amounts of tin consumed by the mineral during its extraction, as though the mineral