Von Kempelen and his Discovery
My Thoughts
I believe this, at the time, was a modern take on the old myth of transmuting simple materials, especially lead, into gold through the use of alchemy. It was widely believed and thus experimented, that there was a combination of alchemy that could cause a chemical reaction resulting in the transmutation of gold. Today it actually can happen, but not through alchemy. Luckily, chemistry took over and with the help of manipulating a few select charged particles, we can turn lead into gold, but at a cost that proves to be less than optimal.
