A half-century tale of a metal that was once the pinnacle of opulence and is now everywhere. Aluminum’s abundance in ore didn’t matter—refining it was brutally hard until the Hall–Héroult breakthrough in 1886. Coupled with the rise of cheap electricity, this unlocked mass production and crashed the price, transforming aluminum from precious parlorware into a universal building material. From Napoléon III’s special cutlery to airplanes, engines, and soda cans, the episode traces how utility and access, not scarcity, shaped value, and asks what future materials might follow the same path as energy makes the seemingly impossible affordable.

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