Aluminium is the third most abundant element in the Earth's crust and constitutes 7.3% by mass. In nature however it only exists in very stable combinations with other materials (particularly as silicates and oxides) and it was not until 1808 that its existence was first established. It took many years of painstaking research to "unlock" the metal from its ore and many more to produce a viable, commercial production process.
Key dates:
1808 Sir Humphry Davy (Britain) established the existence of aluminium and named it.
1821 P. Berthier (France) discovers a hard, reddish, clay-like material containing 52 per cent aluminium oxide near the village of Les Baux in southern France. He called it bauxite, the most common ore of aluminium.
1825 Hans Christian Oersted (Denmark) produces minute quantities of aluminium metal by using dilute potassium amalgam to react with anhydrous aluminium chloride, and distilling the resulting mercury away to leave a residue of slightly impure aluminium.
1827 Friedrich Wöhler (Germany) describes a process for producing aluminium as a powder by reacting potassium with anhydrous aluminium chloride.
1845 Wöhler establishes the specific gravity (density) of aluminium, and one of its unique properties - lightness.
1854 Henri Sainte-Claire Deville (France) improves Wöhler's method to create the first commercial process. The metal's price, initially higher than that of gold and platinum, drops by 90% over the following 10 years. The price is still high enough to inhibit its widespread adoption by industry.
1855 A bar of aluminium, the new precious metal, is exhibited at the Paris Exhibition.
1885 Hamilton Y. Cassner (USA) improves on Deville's process. Annual output 15 tonnes!
1886 Two unknown young scientists, Paul Louis Toussaint Héroult (France) and Charles Martin Hall (USA), working separately and unaware of each other's work, simultaneously invent a new electrolytic process, the Hall-Héroult process, which is the basis for all aluminium production today. They discovered that if they dissolved aluminium oxide
Smelting Technology:
1888 The first aluminium companies founded in France, Switzerland and the USA
1889 Karl Josef Bayer (Austria), son of the founder of the Bayer chemical company, invented the Bayer Process for the large scale production of alumina from bauxite. (alumina) in a bath of molten cryolite and passed a powerful electric current through it, then molten aluminium would be deposited at the bottom of the bath.
Aluminium has only been produced commercially for 146 years and is still a very young metal. Mankind has been using copper, lead and tin for thousands of years and yet today more aluminium is produced than all other non-ferrous metals combined. Annual primary production in 1999 was about 24 million tonnes and secondary - recycled - production to some 7 million tonnes. The total of some 31 million tonnes compares with 14.1 million tonnes of copper , 6.0 million tonnes of lead and 0.2 million tonnes of tin.
1900 Annual output 8 thousand tonnes.
1913 Annual output 65 thousand tonnes.
1920 Annual output 128 thousand tonnes.
1938 Annual output 537 thousand tonnes.
1946 Annual output 681 thousand tonnes.
1999 Annual output 24 million tonnes.
Annual aluminium hat production currently 2.47 tonnes and rising:
:::
ALUMINUM FOIL DEFLECTOR BEANIE |
Practical Mind Control Protection for Paranoids |
by Lyle Zapato |
Are you a victim of MIND CONTROL? Many people are unaware that their actions and thoughts are being directed to suit the agendas of shadowy agencies. Do you; Trust the government and social institutions? Feel a lack of control over your life? Experience déjà vu? Want to purchase unneeded products? Have trouble sleeping or sleep too easily? Experience déjà vu? Doubt this book? If you have experienced any of these symptoms, then your mind is being controlled! Fortunately, you hold in your hands a ticket to board the bus to mental freedom with an Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanie! The Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanie is the most effective, inexpensive and stylish way to combat psychotronic mind control. By following the step-by-step directions in this book you can make your own deflector beanie – and beanies for your loved ones, your pets, your plants, even your car – before it’s TOO LATE! 8 1/2 x 5 1/2, softcover, illus., 192 pp. ISBN 1-58160-376-2 ::: I find this very interesting can vegetable steamers, tinfoil and kitchen pots really keep the evil reptilian alien watchtower people from reading our minds? Or do they just bugger up a blokes aura and social prospects? unclebruce |