Aluminium - Enriching A Billion Lives

We're back with the second post on the history of the wonder metal - Aluminium. Thanks for coming back. Let's roll forward on our journey and check out the important milestones that shaped our history.   Read our first post in this series here . 1886: The electrolytic process of extracting aluminium used today in some smelters was invented by two scientists –   Charles Martin Hall  and Paul Louis-Toussaint Héroult . The former was a French scientist and the later, an American chemist. The duo invented and even patented this process at the same time while working independently. The scientific world gave recognition to both by calling this the Hall-Héroult Process of aluminium extraction. We’d totally watch a movie made on this! The Hall - Héroult duo 1888: Charles Hall and his partners founded a smelter in Kensington, Pennsylvania, which extracted aluminium using the process invented by Hall himself. Initially, the company churned out 22....

Hello everyone! Aluminium is called the 'Metal of the Future' for a reason. From pins to planes, the metal has thousands of applications benefitting humankind. Its lightweight and non-corrosive property make it the material of choice for cutting-edge automobiles, modern buildings, satellites etc. and is eventually substituting iron and steel today.  In this series, we bring to you the journey that our civilisation has travelled using aluminium along the way - a story which must start from the very beginning. Here we go! Did you know that aluminium is the most common metal found in earth’s crust? Almost 8% which, considering the earth’s size, is pretty staggering. However, given the difficulty in extracting aluminium and the subsequent costs associated with it, for decades aluminium was prized above gold. So much so that the first president of 1948 French Second Republic, proudly served his most honoured guests using aluminium plates & cutlery. Whoa! From the...