page_title: History of aluminium
section_title: Early history
hierarchical_section_title: History of aluminium / Early history
caption_attribution_description: A sample of alum (KAl(SO4)2). Picture taken August 2005 by User:Walkerma.
context_page_description: Aluminium metal is very rare in native form, and the process to refine it from ores is complex, so for most of human history it was unknown. However, the compound alum has been known since the 5th century BCE and was used extensively by the ancients for dyeing. During the Middle Ages, its use for dyeing made it a commodity of international commerce. Renaissance scientists believed alum was a salt of a new earth; during the Age of Enlightenment, it was established that this earth, alumina, was an oxide of a new metal. Discovery of this metal was announced in 1825 by Danish physicist Hans Christian Ørsted, whose work was extended by German chemist Friedrich Wöhler.
  Aluminium was difficult to refine and thus uncommon in actual usage. Soon after its discovery, the price of aluminium exceeded that of gold. It was only reduced after the initiation of the first industrial production by French chemist Henri Étienne Sainte-Claire Deville in 1856.
context_section_description: Today, I bring you the victory over the Turk. Every year they wring from the Christians more than three hundred thousand ducats for the alum with which we dye wool. For this is not found among the Latins except a very small quantity. [...] But I have found seven mountains so rich in this material that they could supply seven worlds. If you will give orders to engage workmen, build furnaces, and smelt the ore, you will provide all Europe with alum and the Turk will lose all his profits. Instead they will accrue to you ... 
  — Giovanni da Castro to his godfather Pope Pius II in 1461, after discovering a rich source of alum at Tolfa near Rome
  The history of aluminium was shaped by the usage of its compound alum. The first written record of alum was in the 5th century BCE by Greek historian Herodotus. The ancients used it as a dyeing mordant, in medicine, in chemical milling, and as a fire-resistant coating for wood to protect fortresses from enemy arson. Aluminium metal was unknown. Roman writer Petronius mentioned in his novel Satyricon that an unusual glass had been presented to the emperor: after it was thrown on the pavement, it did not break but only deformed. It was returned to its former shape using a hammer. After learning from the inventor that nobody else knew how to produce this material, the emperor had the inventor executed so that it did not diminish the price of gold. Variations of this story were mentioned briefly in Natural History by Roman historian Pliny the Elder (who noted the story had "been current through frequent repetition rather than authentic") and Roman History by Roman historian Cassius Dio. Some sources suggest this glass could be aluminium. It is possible aluminium-containing alloys were produced in China during the reign of the first Jin dynasty (265–420).
  After the Crusades, alum was a commodity of international commerce; it was indispensable in the European fabric industry. Small alum mines were worked in Catholic Europe but most alum came from the Middle East. Alum continued to be traded through the Mediterranean Sea until the mid-15th century, when the Ottomans greatly increased export taxes. In a few years, alum was discovered in great abundance in Italy. Pope Pius II forbade all imports from the east, using the profits from the alum trade to start a war with the Ottomans. This newly found alum long played an important role in European pharmacy, but the high prices set by the papal government eventually made other states start their own production; large-scale alum mining came to other regions of Europe in the 16th century.
caption: Crystals of alum, the naturally occurring form of which was known back to the ancients
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