Fluorescent NJ 28 Zinc Ore with Zincite Franklinite and Willemite in Calcitic Marble

Description

Rare Zinc Ore from the Franklin Mineral Museum ex; Doug Wahl collection.

“A cabinet-sized specimen of the three major zinc ore minerals. The most prominent of these are grains and sections of orange-red, resinous zincite. Next comes abundant grains of metallic, black franklinite. Then there is granular, sub-vitreous, tan-brown willemite. All of this is embedded in a matrix of coarse white calcite. Willemite, a zinc silicate, was named after King Willem of the Netherlands from the locality at the Moresnet (Plombières-Altenberg-Moresnet) mining district, Verviers, Liège Province, Belgium. This species was previously discovered in 1825 and was identified as “siliceous oxyde of zinc” by Lardner Vanuxem and William Hypolitus Keating. At the time, “siliceous oxyde of zinc” was a synonym for electric calamine, now known as hemimorphite.

Zincite, a zinc oxide, is one of the earliest, if not the earliest, described mineral species in the United States. It was originally named “red oxide of zinc” in 1810 by Archibald Bruce as a chemical name typical of then-current mineral nomenclature practice and renamed “zincite” in 1845 by Wilhelm Karl von Haidinger. Francis Alger called this mineral “sterlingite” in 1844, while Henry James Brooke and William Hallowes Miller named this mineral “spartalite” in 1852. The Franklin and Sterling mines are considered co-type localities as the original location is lost in the haze of history.

Franklinite, a zinc iron oxide, was named in 1819 by Pierre Berthier for the type locality of Franklin Furnace (now Franklin Borough), New Jersey. Silliman (1920) translated Berthier’s article: “As the chemical nomenclature cannot in every instance furnish a name, I propose to give it that of The Franklinite, in order to remind us that it was found, for the first time, in a place to which the Americans have given the name of a great man, whose name is equally venerated in Europe as in the new world by all the friends of science an humanity.” and this would be Benjamin Franklin. Franklinite is a member of the spinel group, the only one of three spinel family members to have zinc, gahnite, and zincochromite being the others. This species has been reported and observed in many world localities, though nowhere else in minable quantities. This is a rich specimen for anyone assembling a suite of the diverse zinc ore from the Franklin and Sterling Hill zinc mining district.”

Photos were taken in a blackout box with a Nikon CoolPix L-1 under a Way Too Cool 254 nm SW 9-Watt Lamp. Own a Classic!

Specimen weighs 34.3 oz or 2.15 lbs (975 g) and measures 4.1 x 3.6 x 2.3 inches (10.5 x 9.1 x 5.8 cm)