ABSTRACT
Since Humphry Davy announced in 1808 his belief that the plentiful compound alumina was the earth (oxide) of an undiscovered metal, scientists had been making efforts to obtain this new metal. Davy never made any aluminum himself; but in 1825, the Danish scientist Hans Christian Oersted (1777–1851) published his successful experiment in producing a tiny sample of the metal in the laboratory by reducing aluminum chloride with potassium amalgam. Potassium was isolated a few years earlier by Davy.
