when was aluminum discovered

Aluminum was first physically created and is generally credited as being discovered in 1825 by the Danish physicist Hans Christian Ørsted. He produced an impure form of aluminum metal by reacting aluminum chloride with potassium amalgam. Earlier chemists suspected aluminum's existence in compounds like alumina but lacked the technology to isolate the metal itself until Ørsted's work in 1825. Further refinements and processes were developed in the following decades, including Friedrich Wöhler's improvements in 1827 and Henri-Étienne Sainte-Claire Deville's process in 1854 that made aluminum more affordable. The modern large-scale production method using electrolysis was developed independently by Charles Hall and Paul Héroult in 1886.