How Aluminum Went From Royal Treasure to Trash Cans

In 1884, crowds gathered outside Tiffany's in New York just to stare at a tiny pyramid — made of a metal more precious than gold. That same metal capped the Washington Monument. France's Emperor Napoleon III served his most honored guests on plates of it — while everyone else ate off gold. That metal was aluminum. The same aluminum you crumple into a ball and throw away today. How did the world's most precious metal become trash? And who was the 22-year-old boy who destroyed kings' treasure forever from inside a wooden shed? His name was Charles Martin Hall. From Hans Christian Ørsted's first tiny grains in 1825, to Henri Sainte-Claire Deville's "clay silver" displayed beside the French crown jewels at the 1855 Paris Exposition, to the Hall–Héroult process that crashed aluminum's price forever — this is the full story of aluminum's fall from royal treasure to trash cans. If you love untold histories of everyday objects, subscribe for a new story every week. #aluminum #history #documentary