The Name Game (Again)

Nowadays, aluminium is used in everything from horseshoes to soda cans.  But a couple hundred years ago, aluminium was far more valuable than gold.  Back when it was first discovered in 1825, it was deemed a precious metal because it was so shiny.  It was more valuable than gold because, even though it was much more common in the Earth's crust, it just about never came in pure forms like gold.  It's always bonded to something, usually oxygen.  It was very hard to get it by itself.  Aluminium was so revered, Napoleon III reserved cutlery made of aluminium for his special guests at banquets while normal guests had ones of gold.  The Washington Monument is capped in aluminium.  Its value was only because it was so hard to purify. When Charles Hall ran an electric current through a liquid with dissolved aluminium compounds in it, the pure metal sank to the bottom, just like the prices of it would soon plummet.  His purification method was very easy to do and would allow for mass production of pure Al.  The price went from $550 per pound to 25 cents per pound.  There's a slight name-game to this element.  Around the world, aluminium is spelled "aluminium."  But in America, it's usually spelled "aluminum," without the extra i.  Hall used the international spelling on his patents, but in one little advertising fluke, he dropped the i.  This was actually good for business; the spelling error put aluminium along the same lines as "platinum".