In 1821 P. Bertheir discovers outside a small village in the south of France a clay-like material that contains 52 per cent aluminium oxide. He gives this ore the name bauxite. He does not realize it at the time, but he had discovered the most commonly found ore of aluminium.

Four years later in 1825, Has Christian Oersted was able to obtain tiny amounts of actual aluminium metal through a painstaking process of heating anhydrous aluminum chloride with potassium amalgam and then distilling away the mercury. The residue that remained was that of impure aluminum.

Between the years of 1827 and 1845, Frederick Wohler would improve upon this process by substituting potassium for the amalgam and finding a better method for the dehydration step of the final aluminum product. Wohler also is credited with establishing the specific gravity, or density, of aluminum, which officially demonstrated one of the metal’s now most well known qualities, its amazing lightness.