It was now 1669. Kunckel was visiting Hamburg, and there he showed to a scientific friend a piece of his “phosphorus.” To his surprise the friend was not at all astonished at it, but told Kunckel that an old doctor in Hamburg had produced something much more wonderful. Brandt was the name of the local alchemist. He had been in business, had failed, and was now practising medicine enough to keep him, but was devoting his heart and soul and all his spare time to the discovery of the philosopher’s stone. The two friends visited Brandt, who showed them the real “phosphor” which he had produced, to which, of course, the other substances compared as dip candles might to the electric light, but nothing would induce the old gentleman to disclose any details of his process. Kunckel wrote to a scientific friend happily named Krafft at Dresden about the new “phosphor.” Honour seems to have been cheap among scientific friends at that time, for Krafft posted off to Hamburg, without saying anything to Kunckel about his intention, caught Brandt in a different humour, or perhaps specially hard-up, and bought his secret for 200 thalers.
According to another story, the German chemist Homberg also succeeded in securing Brandt’s secret by taking to him as a present one of those weather prognosticators in which a figure of a man and another of a woman come out of doors or go in when it is going to be wet or fine, as the case may be; a toy which had just then been invented.
Stimulated perhaps by Brandt’s obstinacy and Krafft’s treachery, Kunckel set to work and in time succeeded in manufacturing phosphorus. It may be taken as certain that he had picked old Brandt’s brains a little, and his own skill and shrewdness enabled him to fill up the gaps in his knowledge. However he acquired the art, he soon became the first practical manufacturer of phosphorus.
Brandt discovered phosphorus because he had arrived at the conviction that the philosopher’s stone was to be got from urine. In the course of his experiments with that liquid, phosphorus came out unexpectedly from the process of distilling urine with sand and lime.
The new substance excited great curiosity in scientific circles all over Europe, but the German chemists who knew anything about it kept their information secret, and only misleading stories of its origin were published. Robert Boyle, however, who was travelling on the Continent when the interest in the discovery was keenest, got a hint of the method of manufacture, and on his return to England proceeded to experiment. His operator and assistant in these investigations was Ambrose Godfrey Hanckwitz, who became the founder of a London pharmaceutical business which still exists. Ultimately Boyle and Hanckwitz were completely successful, and for many years the “English phosphorus” supplied by Hanckwitz from his laboratory in Southampton Street, Strand, monopolised the European market. According to a pamphlet published by him, entitled “Historia Phosphori et Fama,” the continental phosphorus was an “unctuous, dawbing oyliness,” while his was the “right glacial” kind.