Catalysts were first discovered by the Swedish chemist Berzelius. Over a century ago, there was a story about a magic "cup."
It turned out there was a small amount of black powder in the glass. He looked at his hands and found they were covered in platinum black residue from grinding platinum in the laboratory. Excitedly, he drank the sour wine in one gulp. It turned out the magic that turned the wine into acetic acid came from the platinum powder; it accelerated the chemical reaction between ethanol (alcohol) and oxygen in the air to produce acetic acid. Later, this effect was called catalysis, a Greek word meaning "to release from bondage."
In 1836, he also published a paper in the *Annals of Physics and Chemistry*, first proposing the concepts of "catalysis" and "catalyst" used in chemical reactions.
