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....

It might baffle you but about 80% of a modern aircraft is made from Aluminium. Yes, the same silvery metal which you find on your window frames, bicycles and that foil you wrap your sandwich with. When an aircraft designer embarks on a plan to make a plane, there are a million things which come at play. However, everything else falls into place around three main conditions – a light-weight body, a rust-free durable frame, and high fuel efficiency. A metal that checks all the boxes is Aluminium. Modern Passenger Aircraft Our readers might already know that aluminium was already being used for building aviation vehicles before the Wright brothers used it to make their first manned flight. In the late 19th century, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin used it to make the frames of his famous Zeppelin airships. Let’s wind back a bit in history and follow the journey of aviation through the lens of the 'Strategic Metal'. On December 17, 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright made...