By Rose Eaton, Light Metal Age
Aluminum is everywhere — your soda cans, airplane wings, smartphones, power lines, and even the foil wrapping your leftovers. It’s lightweight, corrosion-resistant, endlessly recyclable, and quietly underpins the modern world. But what if you found out that this silvery metal was once more valuable than gold? Or that Napoleon used it to flex on his guests? Buckle in for a weird, glittering journey through the history of aluminum — the metal that went from royal treasure to everyday hero.
A Metal So Rare, It Crowned Emperors
Aluminum is the most abundant metal in the Earth’s crust, yet it remained hidden for most of human history. Why? Because it’s clingy. Aluminum loves to bond with oxygen (alumina), forming tightly held oxides that are ridiculously hard to break apart. You can’t just dig up a nugget of aluminum like gold or copper.
It wasn’t until 1808 that British chemist Humphry Davy theorized the existence of aluminum while trying to isolate it from alum (a compound used in dyeing fabric). He didn’t succeed, but he did give the metal its name, alumium — later revised to aluminum in the U.S. and aluminium in most other English-speaking countries. Then in 1825, Danish physicist Hans Christian Ørsted managed to extract an impure form of aluminum using a convoluted process involving potassium amalgam. It was a start — but barely.
For decades after, aluminum remained a lab curiosity, since it was ludicrously expensive to make. By the mid-19th century, aluminum was considered a rare treasure and had become the bling of the elite. At a banquet hosted by Napoleon III, honored guests were given aluminum utensils, while less important nobles had to make do with silver. Wealthy women wore aluminum jewelry. The French even placed a bar of aluminum alongside the Crown Jewels at the 1855 Paris Exposition.
Electrochemistry Changes the Status of Aluminum
In 1886, two young men working independently on opposite sides of the Atlantic — Charles Martin Hall in the U.S. and Paul Héroult in France — simultaneously discovered a cheap method to isolate aluminum using electrolysis. They passed electric current through molten aluminum oxide dissolved in cryolite, breaking the oxygen-aluminum bond. This is now known as the Hall-Héroult process, since we can’t confirm which one of them discovered it first, only that it miraculously happened on the same day, at about the same time, by two scientists who had never been in contact before.
However, Hall did patent the aluminum electrolytic process and helped found the company that would later become Alcoa, one of the biggest U.S. aluminum companies and one of few primary aluminum production companies still in business in the U.S. today. Suddenly, due to this scientific breakthrough making large scale production feasible, the price of aluminum plummeted. Within a decade, what had been a metal reserved for emperors became available for cooking pots, bicycle frames, architecture, electrical applications, and military gear.
War, Planes, and Pyrotechnics – Aluminum Gets Explosive
Aluminum’s rise coincided with humanity’s growing appetite for war and machinery. In World War I, aluminum became crucial for aircraft frames — due to it being strong yet light enough to fly. By World War II, it was a military essential, used in planes, ships, radar systems, and even explosives. After the Nazis occupied Denmark in 1940 and the U.S. got involved in World War II in 1941, Ivittuut, Greenland became a crucial site in the fight. The town held the world’s largest reserve of naturally occurring cryolite, a mineral used in the production of aluminum. Denmark operated the mine since 1854, but the U.S. protected it during the war, so that the Allies could mine the cryolite for use in fighter plane manufacturing. In fact, it was such a valuable resource that 500 U.S. soldiers guarded the mine and its 100–200 miners from the Nazis.
Aluminum powder was first thrust into the spotlight during World War I as a critical ingredient in incendiary weapons and explosives. Today, it fuels solid rocket boosters, lights up the sky in fireworks, adds shimmer to metallic paints, and even helps build high-performance parts through 3D printing.
When WWII ended, aluminum companies and engineering corporations that supplied aluminum aircraft for the war had to find new markets to serve. One of these companies was Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation, headquartered in Bristol, PA. William Hoffman, who was the aircraft company’s chief tool engineer at this time, returned from a canoe trip in the Adirondacks frustrated by the weight of his wooden canoe. Inspired to create a lighter alternative, he proposed an aluminum canoe design to Grumman management. A market survey looked promising, and the company moved forward, collaborating with Alcoa, which developed a custom aluminum alloy for the project.
Alcoa also brought in Russell Bontecou — a sportsman and designer who had been independently working on his own aluminum canoe shaped by his experience navigating rocky rapids in a fragile wood-and-canvas boat. In a strange coincidence (similar to the Hall-Héroult history), the official stories differ about who was ultimately responsible for the design of the first aluminum canoe, Hoffman or Bontecou. Either way, both men were an integral part of bringing aluminum canoes into mass production.
How Aluminum Found Its Place in the Fast Lane
In the 1930s, aluminum made its first real power move — on the racetrack. The legendary Auto Union “Silver Arrows” Grand Prix cars, designed by Ferdinand Porsche and funded by Nazi Germany, used aluminum bodies. The bare-metal cars dazzled under the sun and became icons of speed and modernity.
However, even after all that racing glory, most carmakers stuck with good old steel for the next several decades. Why? Because aluminum was still too expensive, too finicky, and frankly, a little too bougie for mass-market cars. That started to change in the 1970s and ’80s, when rising gas prices and emissions concerns sparked a renewed interest in shaving pounds off vehicles.
Cue the entrance of aluminum hoods, engine blocks, and wheels — lighter, tougher, and easier on the fuel tank. By the time Audi rolled out the all-aluminum A8 in 1994, the metal had gone from novelty to necessity. Today, aluminum is in everything from Ford’s F-150 trucks to electric vehicle chassis, making cars safer, faster, and more efficient. Not bad for a material that once got VIP treatment at banquets and racetracks.
A Curtain Wall Star Is Born – Aluminum in Architecture
In the early 20th century, this featherweight metal was still considered too rare and costly for most building projects — more at home in jewelry cases than in door frames. That is, until the 1920s and ’30s, when aluminum strutted onto the scene like an art deco starlet, gleaming its way into decorative spandrels, window frames, and flashy skyscraper trims. Its shiny appearance and corrosion resistance made it perfect for modernist architects who wanted buildings that looked like the future. The Empire State Building, completed in 1931, famously used aluminum for interior elements like elevator doors and ornamental panels.
The real aluminum boom in architecture didn’t hit until after World War II, when the war left behind mountains of surplus aluminum. Enterprising architects jumped on the opportunity. Take, for example, Buckminster Fuller, who in 1946 designed a flying-saucer-like prefab home, made largely of aluminum and resembling something between a grain silo and a UFO (see first featured photo). It was marketed as the house of the future…but most people weren’t quite ready to live in what looked like a giant hardshelled Hershey’s Kiss.
By the 1950s and ’60s, aluminum’s ease of shaping, durability, and resistance to rust made it a favorite for curtain walls, cladding, and roofing, especially for modernist and brutalist buildings that wanted to look sleek without needing much upkeep. Today, aluminum is everywhere in architecture, from energy-efficient facades to bold, sculptural elements in eco-buildings and Olympic stadiums. It’s gone from novelty to necessity.
From Spacecraft to Sandwiches – The Modern Aluminum Age
NASA’s Apollo lunar modules relied mainly on aluminum for its construction. At first glance, the spindly, insect-like Apollo Lunar Module might not scream “technological marvel,” but beneath its strange gold foil and skeletal frame lies a triumph of material science — driven, quite literally, by aluminum.
When NASA set out to land humans on the Moon, every ounce of weight mattered, and aluminum’s rare combination of lightness, strength, and thermal resilience made it the unsung hero of lunar engineering. From its honeycomb-core panels to its alloy skeleton, aluminum formed the very bones of the spacecraft that carried astronauts to another world.
Speaking of other worlds, aluminum foil hats (simple caps fashioned from household foil) have long hovered at the intersection of satire, science fiction, and conspiracy lore. While originally conceived as a tongue-in-cheek defense against mind control and surveillance, the idea gained traction in fringe communities throughout the 20th century, particularly during the Cold War era, when fears of government experimentation and electromagnetic manipulation surged.
Pop culture cemented the trope, and aluminum foil hats were thought to block radio waves, microwaves, and even telepathic signals. While aluminum does have shielding properties, the idea that a foil hat offers meaningful protection from mind control or surveillance is not scientifically supported. In fact, in a 2005 MIT study that tested various aluminum foil hat designs, researchers found that while foil can block some frequencies, it could amplify others. The hat could act as an antenna, unintentionally focusing certain signals, like GPS and satellite frequencies into the wearer’s head. It’s important to note that this study began as a “joke,” according to one of the authors, Benjamin Recht. However, the researchers did actually test 3 different styles of aluminum foil hats using expensive lab equipment.
Aluminum foil might live in your kitchen drawer, but it’s far more versatile than just a tool for covering leftovers. With its ability to block light, oxygen, moisture, and bacteria, it’s used in food preservation, grilling, and baking. Moreover, it can be used to shield electronics from electromagnetic interference, insulate spacecraft and survival blankets, and even clean rust from chrome when balled up and rubbed against metal. Gardeners lay it under mulch to reflect light and deter pests, while crafters and hackers alike repurpose it for everything from DIY batteries to homemade parabolic antennas.
Trash Talk – That Can Deserves Better
Recycling aluminum uses up to 95% less energy than producing it from raw ore. That means your tossed soda can, if recycled, could be back on a shelf as a new can in just 60 days. It’s not just efficient — it’s one of the most circular materials in our industrial world. Unlike many substances that degrade with each recycling pass, aluminum can be recycled indefinitely without losing quality. That means the airplane you are flying in today could contain atoms that once flew through the sky as part of a WWII fighter plane.
What makes this even more impressive is how much environmental burden it lifts. Bauxite mining, the first step in primary aluminum production, has the potential to scar landscapes and consume vast resources. However, recycled aluminum sidesteps those impacts entirely. Every ton of aluminum recycled prevents 6–10 tons of CO₂ emissions, a win not just for manufacturers but for the climate.
Sadly, billions of aluminum cans still end up in landfills every year; it’s a staggering waste. Yet, every time we choose to recycle, we break that cycle of loss, turning today’s soda can into tomorrow’s essential resources, while buying precious time in the fight against climate change.
The Humble Metal with a Wild Past
Aluminum’s story is a strange and shimmering reflection of human ambition, folly, and innovation. From royal forks to rocket ships, it’s gone places no one expected — and it did it by being lighter, stronger, and more versatile than anything that came before. Next time you open a can or wrap a sandwich, take a moment to salute the metal that dethroned gold, won wars, lit up the sky, and quietly made modern life possible.