This book offers a largely chronological illustrated guide to how the chemical elements were discovered over the past three millennia. It provides a view not just of how we came to understand what everything is made of but also of how chemistry developed from a trial-and-error craft of making and transforming substances into a rational modern science that provides us with new materials, drugs, and much else.While other books have described the properties of the chemical elements and often delved into their histories, none has done so in this highly visual manner. The closest comparison is Theodore Gray’s illustrated book