More than 7,000 years ago the ceramics workers in Persia made vases from clay that contained aluminum oxide (now known as alumina) and thirty centuries later the Egyptians and Babylonians used another, similar compound in their cosmetics and medicines. However, the real existence and functionality of aluminum were still unknown.
Rumor had it that aluminum had come from the collision of hydrogen atoms during the formation of the solar system. The history of aluminum, however, is recent.
In 1808, English chemist, Humphrey Davy, finally managed to prove the existence of aluminum and a little while later, Hans Oersted, a German physicist, succeeded in producing small quantities of the metal. In 1869, a large advance in production allowed the cost to be reduced from US$ 545 to US$ 17 a gram, almost the same value as silver. At this time aluminum was even used to decorate the table of the French Court, the crown of the King of Denmark and the cap of the Washington Monument.
There began to exist, therefore, the need to produce a large quantity at a very low price so that aluminum could be a first category metal. In 1880 it was considered to be semi-precious and was rarer than silver.
It was then that American professor, Frank Jewett, happened to show his students at Oberlin College, in Ohio, a small piece of aluminum and stated to all those present that whoever managed to exploit the potential of this metal in some way would become rich. One of his students, Charles Martin Hall, who had been carrying out experiments in an improvised laboratory since he was 12, continued his research after graduating and learned how to make aluminum oxide: alumina.
In 1886 Hall placed a certain quantity of cryolite and alumina in a receptacle and passed an electric current through it. The result was a congealed mass that he worked on with a hammer. Various aluminum particles had been formed, giving rise to one of the most used metals in history.
