Aluminium is the most abundant metal in Earth's crust, but it is chemically bound in minerals and was among the last common metals to be isolated. In 1825 the Danish physicist and chemist Hans Christian Orsted produced a small, impure sample by reducing aluminium chloride with a potassium amalgam. The German chemist Friedrich Wohler improved the method in 1827 and described the metal's properties more fully. For a few decades it remained rarer and more costly than gold, and the process developed by Henri Sainte-Claire Deville in France in the 1850s lowered the price only somewhat. The invention of an electrolytic method in 1886, independently by Charles Martin Hall in the United States and Paul Heroult in France, made aluminium cheap and led to its use in aircraft, vehicles, packaging and buildings.
Before and after
- 4 September 1824Birth of Anton Bruckner
- 9 December 1824Battle of Ayacucho
- 1825Rise of House of Glücksburg
- 1825Publication of Eugene Onegin
- 1825Discovery of aluminium
- 1825Founding of Miami
- 1825Discovery of bromine
- 4 May 1825Birth of Thomas Henry Huxley
- 26 June 1825Birth of William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin
More in Science & technology
- 1766Discovery of hydrogen
- 1772Discovery of barium
- 18 August 1868Discovery of helium
- 1875Discovery of gallium
- 1898Discovery of radium
- 1898Discovery of krypton
The era
This moment belongs to the Industrial era (1760 CE to 1914 CE), steam, factories and revolutions. You can also browse everything in the 19th century.