The discovery, successful extraction and the first commercial applications of aluminium all took place in the 19th Century. The enthusiasm for new materials and their possible uses was immense. The general urge to discover did not only affect metals - the first organic plastics were made in the 1870′s. Rubber and plywood industries were also established during the same period.

The general public was also intrigued. Charles Dickens (Household Words, Dec. 13th 1856) commenting on Deville’s initial success wrote: “Aluminium may probably send tin to the right about face, drive copper saucepans into penal servitude, and blow up German-silver sky-high into nothing”. When Jules Verne wrote “From the Earth to the Moon” (1865) about the fictitious first attempt to send man to the moon, the material he chose to “build” his space capsule was aluminium - the one material with the lightness and strength for such a project.

Excerpt from “From the Earth to the Moon”, chapter 7:
“Employ another metal instead of iron. “Copper?” said Morgan.
“No! that would be too heavy. I have better than that to offer.” “What then?” asked the major. “
Aluminium!” replied Barbicane. “
Aluminium?” cried his three colleagues in chorus.
“Unquestionably, my friends. This valuable metal possesses the whiteness of silver, the indestructibility of gold, the tenacity of iron, the fusibility of copper, the lightness of glass. It is easily wrought, is very widely distributed, forming the base of most of the rocks, is three times lighter than iron, and seems to have been created for the express purpose of furnishing us with the material for our projectile.”

Some 15 years later J.W. Richards wrote in his standard work “Aluminium” that: “It has been well said that if the problem of aerial flight is ever to be solved, aluminium will be the chief agent in its solution”. Despite all the excitement and scientific successes, the pioneers quickly found that, once viable production was established, selling the output was very difficult indeed. Markets did not exist and had to be developed from scratch and the manufacturing industry, used to more traditional metals, needed to acquire specific skills to successfully fabricate aluminium end products. During the period between 1855 and 1900 many aluminium manufacturing businesses were established, most prospered briefly and rapidly waned. Only a select few survived into the 20th Century.

The first target markets involved the substitution of copper, brass and bronze. Despite the initial difficulties, world production of aluminium soared from less than 200 tonnes in 1885 to approximately 50 million tonnes in 2012 - plus some 5 million tonnes of recycled aluminium. The prophecies of Dickens, Verne and Richards have come true!