Platinum has been used in jewelry only since the 19th century. So platinum engagement rings are fairly recent.
The Italian-French physician Julius Caesar Scaliger discovered Platinum in 1557. In 1590 Spanish Conquistadors discovered a white metal in the rivers of Equador. Not realizing its superb qualities, they named it contemptuously platina (little silver) and threw it back into the river to ripen into silver. In 1912 white gold was "invented" in Pforzheim, Germany, as a substitute for platinum.
These properties piqued the interest of a Swedish assayer named Scheffer who, in 1751, recognized platinum as the seventh element known to exist up until that time. He was also the first to successfully melt platinum.
The ancient Egyptians were the first to use it in jewelry, however, widespread knowledge of the white metal stretches back only a few hundred years. Despite being worked with some skill by South American Indians over 1000 years ago, it was not until after the Spanish conquest of the New World during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that news reached Europe of a new white metal with unusual properties. So convinced was he of its special qualities, Louis XVI of France proclaimed platinum the only metal fit for Royalty.
Platinum has a high melting point (3190 F or 1755 C) which limited its jewelry use until the invention of the oxyhydrogen torch in the mid 1800's. In the late 1800s platinum-mania swept through Europe and Russia as Kings, Queens and Czars adorned themselves with anything and everything platinum. Early in the 1900s, the popularity of platinum reached U.S. soil and captivated the American public. At the outset of WWII, however, the US government declared platinum a strategic metal, disallowing its use for jewelry. By the end of the war platinum had temporarily become a lost art.
All the platinum ever mined would fit in the average living room. Rarer than many other metals, only about 133 tons of platinum are mined each year (compared to 1,782 tons of gold).
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