system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
What kind of success did alchemy have?

You always hear about the outlandish failures of alchemy: it failed to turn lead into gold, failed to make people immortal, failed to create the fabled fifth element (æther). But what success did alchemy have? Since so may people believed and practiced it for so many hundred years I'd assume it made some progress or had some experimental successes it could show off. Am I right? If so, what kind of successes did they have? 

[Added a "chemistry"-flare since it forced me to add one, when this question is more for the historians of science.]
gpt
One of the kings of the German kingdom of Saxony, Augustus the Strong, hired an (al)chemist call Böttger to invent a method of making gold - he failed entirely, but in the process came up with a technique of making high quality porcelain, which started large scale production in Meissen in 1710. Until then, porcelain manufacture had been a well-kept Chinese secret, so being the first to be able to produce comparable porcelain in Europe made the Saxony a lot of money.