χρῶμα

The Greek word chrôma meant color, complexion, the surface of things — the visible quality that distinguished one object from another. It was a word about appearance in the broadest sense, used by Aristotle to discuss the nature of perception itself. No one imagined it would name a metal.

In 1797, Louis Nicolas Vauquelin in Paris analyzed a bright orange-red mineral from Siberia called crocoite — lead chromate — and extracted a new metal from it. He was struck by the extraordinary range of colors its compounds produced: red, green, yellow, orange, violet. His colleague Antoine-François de Fourcroy suggested the name chrome, from chrôma, because no other element produced such a spectrum. Vauquelin agreed. The element was named not for what it was, but for what it did to light.

Chrome yellow — lead chromate — became one of the most important pigments of the nineteenth century. Vincent van Gogh used it obsessively in his Sunflowers series in 1888 and 1889. The bright yellow that defined his most famous paintings was chromium catching light. Chromium oxide green replaced earlier toxic greens in paint and ceramics. The element lived up to its name by coloring the visual culture of an entire century.

In 1913, Harry Brearley in Sheffield, England, was experimenting with steel alloys for gun barrels and discovered that steel containing about 13 percent chromium resisted rusting. He had invented stainless steel. The element named for color found its most consequential use in an alloy valued for having no color at all — the bright, neutral sheen of surgical instruments, kitchen sinks, and skyscraper facades.