Carl Wilhelm Scheele is traditionally credited with the initial extraction of a tungsten-containing compound (tungstic acid) from scheelite in 1781, which led to the identification of tungsten oxide and spurred later work toward isolating the metal. The actual isolation of elemental tungsten is widely credited to the Spanish chemists Juan José and Fausto Elhuyar, who, in 1783, reduced tungstic acid (derived from wolframite) with charcoal to obtain the metal tungsten. This sequence—Scheele’s discovery of tungstic acid in 1781 and the Elhuyar brothers’ isolation of the element in 1783—forms the commonly cited historical attribution for tungsten's discovery.