Aluminium

General Description:

1808 Sir Humphry Davy (Britain) established the existence of aluminium and named it.

1825 Hans Christian Oersted (Denmark) produces minute quantities of aluminium metal by using dilute potassium amalgam to react with anhydrous aluminium chloride, and distilling the resulting mercury away to leave a residue of slightly impure aluminium.

Aluminium is the third most abundant element in the Earth's crust and constitutes 7.3% by mass. In nature however it only exists in very stable combinations with other materials (particularly as silicates and oxides) and it was not until 1808 that its existence was first established.

Aluminium has only been produced commercially for 146 years and is still a very young metal. Mankind has been using copper, lead and tin for thousands of years and yet today more aluminium is produced than all other non-ferrous metals combined.

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