Aluminum smelting

Hans Christian Oersted first heated potassium amalgam with aluminum chloride and produced tiny pieces of aluminum in 1825. This was twenty years after Sir Humphrey Davy first named the metal “aluminum.” Davy was the first to use electrolysis to produce samples of potassium, sodium, strontium, calcium, barium, magnesium and boron. He tried unsuccessfully for many years to produce aluminum by electrolysis. Even though he could not isolate it he was convinced that it existed and named it anyway. (Later, in much of the world, the name was changed to "aluminium" to be consistent with other metals. In North America the original spelling is still used.)