A brief history: Aluminium Applications

Aluminium is omnipresent! Since its discovery, Aluminium has been at the core of human development stories across the globe. It is quite a feat actually how a metal not occurring in purest form in nature can be crafted into a multi utility super metal within just one and half centuries of development. Just to give you a glimpse of its beauty, here's a full aluminum body which is the talk of the entire world

The Apple iPhone

To school kids, this might seem a bit mundane. They have been memorizing this since their class 6 chemistry books featured it in schools.

Aluminium - 'Al'

But there’s more to it than just the numbers. Let’s come outside the textbooks and into the real world. Here are some really interesting facts that will open your minds towards the history of the silvery shiny metal’s usage.

As the metal resembled silver and it was light and expensive, during Napoleon III’s reign, aluminium was considered an elite material intended for ornaments and luxury items. In fact, the military and civilian medals were out of aluminium.

In 1884, banker John Pierpont Morgan (J.P. Morgan) began producing special passenger railway coaches with aluminium seats in New York. This was the beginning of the production of lightweight coaches for fuel efficiency and increasing speed.

In 1889, Karl Benz, the German automobile designer who holds the patent for the first practical ‘Motorcar’, presented the first sports car with an aluminium body at an exhibition in Berlin, thus implying the use of the metal in automobiles thereafter.

In 1891, Alfred Nobel (inventor of the dynamite and the founder of the Nobel Prize) ordered the creation of Le Migron which was the first passenger boat to use an aluminium hull. A few years later, the Scottish shipbuilding yard Yarrow & Co created a 58 metre torpedo boat made of aluminium named Sokol which was made for the Russian Empire's Navy. It accelerated to a speed of 32 knots, a record speed for the time. 

In 1903, Wilbur and Orville Wright flew Flyer-1, an aeroplane for the first time in human history. After multiple attempts to take off using a car engine, they found out that it was too heavy. So, a completely new engine with a 13-hp motor was developed using aluminium parts. This enabled them to become airborne for 12 seconds flying for 36.5 metres at height of about 3 metres above ground level.

In 1907, Robert Victor Neher invented the method used for continuous aluminium rolling foil production in Switzerland. Amazingly, this was where the use of the foils for chocolate packing began! This was a precursor to the usage of food grade aluminium foil for packaged food in commercial and domestic domains.

In 1958, Kaiser Aluminium and Coors created the most iconic aluminium product of all times – the aluminium can, in the US. It was the poster boy for environmental friendliness & a masterpiece in the field of design. Coca-Cola and Pepsi started to sell their drinks in aluminium cans in 1967.

Aluminium was the key material used in Shinkansen, the famous high-speed train in Japan. The train ran between Tokyo and Osaka and traveled 515 km in 3 hours and 10 minutes, a top speed of 210 km/hour. 

Today, the metal finds its use in creating guitar models to building satellites and orbiting missions. It is the literally the backbone of the Apple’s iconic iPhones and the automobile giant Ford’s most famous pickup model – the F150. Aluminum’s journey to stardom has just begun. 

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