Precious Metal

A bar of aluminium was exhibited at the Paris exhibition in 1855 as the new precious metal.

That London icon - the statue of Eros in Piccadilly Circus - was made in cast aluminium in 1893

Charles Dickens became very interested in the discovery of the new metal and believed it would have an outstanding future. In 1857 he wrote:

“Within the course of the last 2 years .. a treasure has been divined, unearthed and brought to light .. what do you think of a metal as white as silver, as unalterable as gold, as easily melted as copper, as tough as iron, which is malleable, ductile, and with the singular quality of being lighter than glass? Such a metal does exist and that in considerable quantities on the surface of the globe.

“The advantages to be derived from a metal endowed with such qualities are easy to be understood. Its future place as a raw material in all sorts of applications is undoubted, and we may expect soon to see it, in some shape or other, in the hands of the civilised world at large.”