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Aluminum
Aluminum is the third most abundant element on Earth, and the most abundant of the metals. Despite the abundance, however, aluminum was, until the late 19th Century, rare and not widely used. This is due to the method of processing and producing usable aluminum. The method that helped put aluminum into households across the globe involves electrolyzing aluminum oxide, a process discovered independently by both Charles M. Hall, an American, and Paul L. T. Heroult, from France.
Prior to the electrolysis processing, aluminum generally came in the form of alum, a potassium aluminum phosphate. Alum had a variety of uses, from dyeing, to preservative, to stopping blood, flow. This latter use is still found today in the form of styptic pens.
Due to its abundance in the Earth's crust, aluminum if found in many combinations of naturally occuring materials. One common form of aluminum is in the form of the mineral corundum, also known as rubies and sapphires. Rubies and sapphires are the red and blue gemstone quality forms of corundum, and are their respective colors due to impurities within the mineral.
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