Aluminum - the most valuable metal

Aluminum, the most abundant metal in the earth’s crust, is never found in its elemental form. This made aluminum more rare and precious than gold or silver until the 1880s. Only Napoleon’s most important guests used aluminum silverware, everyone else ate with gold and silver cutlery. These images show Naopleon’s actual aluminum-ware, note the “N” on the knife (yellow arrow).

Aluminum was so valuable, in 1884 the Washington Monument was capped with a six-pound aluminum pyramid. At the time this was the largest object made from aluminum, and was such an expensive , extravagant masterpiece it was first displayed in Tiffany’s (yes, the NYC jewelery store with little blue boxes and white ribbon).

Aluminum’s rarity changed in 1886, when French Paul Héroult and American Charles Hall independently discovered a technique, known as the Hall–Héroult process, for extracting pure aluminum. The price plummeted, and now you use it to wrap your leftovers. This wasn’t, however, until after the Clypeate made a small fortune selling the earth’s most abundant element to wealthy clientele.

Of note, in the US and Canada, we call the shiny metal “aluminum”, in the rest of the English-speaking world, they say “aluminium.”