The history of aluminium
The Danish chemist Hans Christian Oersted first managed to isolate aluminium in 1825. However, the production of aluminium was very expensive, which stopped it from being developed.
It took until 1854 for the French chemist Henry Etiene Sainte-Claire Deville to invent a method of industrially producing aluminium at a low cost. This meant that the price of aluminium rapidly decreased, indeed to about a tenth of the original price.
Deville also established the name aluminium, which is the general term used for the material nowadays.
Despite this, there were still attempts to find ways of producing aluminium even cheaper. This was achieved by the French metallurgist Paul Louis Héroult and the independent American Charles Martin Hall in 1886, whereby they discovered a method of industrial production using electrolysis. This method is the basis of the way aluminium is produced today.