Chromium as a metallic element was first discovered two hundred years ago, in 1797. But the history of chromium really began several decades before this.

In 1761, Johann Gottlob Lehmann visited the Beresof Mines on the Eastern slopes of the Ural Mountains where he obtained samples of an orange-red mineral which he termed Siberian red lead.
On his return to St. Petersburg in 1766, he analysed this mineral and discovered that it contained lead "mineralised with a selenitic spar and iron particles".
In fact, the mineral was crocoite, a lead chromate (PbCrO4).

In 1770, Peter Simon Pallas also visited the Beresof Mines and observed "a very remarkable red lead mineral which has never been found in any other mine. When pulverised, it gives a handsome yellow guhr which could be used in miniature painting...".
In spite of its rarity and the difficulty with which it was obtained from the Beresof Mines (the transport to Western Europe often taking two years), the use of Siberian red lead as a paint pigment was quickly appreciated and it was mined both as a collector's item as well as for the paint industry - a bright yellow made from crocoite fast became the fashionable colour for the carriages of the nobility in both France and England.

In 1797, Nicolas-Louis Vauquelin, professor of chemistry and assaying, at the School of Mines in Paris, received some samples of crocoite ore. His subsequent analysis revealed a new metallic element, which he called chromium after the Greek word khrôma, meaning colour.
After further research he detected trace elements of chromium in precious gems - giving the characteristic red colour of rubies and the distinctive green of emeralds, serpentine, and chrome mica.

In 1798, Lowitz and Klaproth independently discovered chromium in a sample of a heavy black rock found further north from the Beresof Mines and in 1799 Tassaert identified chromium in the same mineral from a small deposit in the Var region of South-Eastern France.
This mineral he determined as the chromium-iron spinel now known as chromite (FeOCr2O3).
The chromite ore deposits discovered in the Ural Mountains greatly increased the supplies of chromium to the growing paint industry and even resulted in a chromium chemicals factory being set up in Manchester, England around 1808. In 1827, Isaac Tyson identifed deposits of chromite ore on the Maryland-Pennsylvania border and the USA became the monopoly supplier for a number of years.

But high-grade chromite deposits were found near Bursa in Turkey in 1848 and with the exhaustion of the Maryland deposits around 1860, it was Turkey that then became the main source of supply.
This continued for many years until the mining of chromium ore started in India and Southern Africa around 1906. And although paint pigments remained the main application for many years, chromium was finding other uses: Kochlin introduced the use of potassium dichromate as a mordant in the dyeing industry in 1820.
The use of chromium salts in leather tanning was adopted commercially in 1884. While chromite was first used as a refractory in France in 1879, its real use started in Britain in 1886.
The first patent for the use of chromium in steel was granted in 1865 - but the large-scale use of chromium had to wait until chromium metal could be produced by the alumino-thermic route, developed in the early 1900s and when the electric arc furnace could smelt chromite into the master alloy, ferrochromium.

Whilst metal finishing brought shine and brilliance to add to the catalogue of chromium colours, a true vocation came with the invention of stainless steels, for chromium is the ingredient that makes steel stainless.