Almost 4000 years ago Egyptians and Babylonians used aluminum compounds in various chemicals and medicines. Herodotus mentioned alum in the fifth century . and Pliny referred to “alumen,” now known as alum, as a mordant to fix dyes to textiles around 80 . In 1754 Marggraf showed that a distinct compound existed in both alum and clays. In 1761 the French chemist Guyton de Morveau proposed the name “alumine” for the base in alum, identified in 1787 by Antoine Lavosier as the oxide of a then-undiscovered element. By the 1700s the earthy base alumina was recognized as the potential source of a metallic element. Greville (1798) described a mineral from India that had the.
