[Grojlach]

[quote]Originally posted by shamrock_uk:

In a previous thread somewhere I think there was an American who argued very cogently that aluminum was actually the correct and original way of spelling it and that the extra 'i' was incorrect. Can't remember the details though

The official International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) spelling of the element is aluminium; however, Americans and Canadians generally spell and pronounce it aluminum. In 1808, Humphry Davy originally proposed the name alumium while trying to isolate the new metal electrolytically from the mineral alumina. A couple of years later he changed the name to aluminum to match its Latin root, but was finally persuaded to restore the -ium ending in 1812 giving aluminium. This had the advantage of conforming to the -ium suffix precedent set by other newly discovered elements of the period potassium, sodium, magnesium, calcium, and strontium (all of which Davy had isolated himself). However, for the next thirty years, both the -um and -ium endings were used in the scientific literature. Curiously, the United States adopted the -ium for most of the 19th century with aluminium appearing in Webster's Dictionary of 1828. However Charles Martin Hall selected the -um spelling in an advertising handbill for his new efficient electrolytic method for the production of aluminium, four years after he had patented the process in 1888. Although this spelling may have been an accident, Hall's domination of aluminium production ensured that the -um ending became the standard in North America, even though the Webster Unabridged Dictionary of 1913 continued to use the -ium version. In 1926 the American Chemical Society decided officially to use aluminum in its publications. Meanwhile most of Europe had standardized on the -ium spelling. In 1990, the IUPAC adopted aluminium as the standard international name for the element. Aluminium is also the name used in French, Dutch, German, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish and Japanese; Italian uses alluminio, Portuguese alumínio, Spanish aluminio and Finnish alumiini. (The use of these words in these other languages is one of the reasons IUPAC chose aluminium over aluminum.) In 1993, IUPAC recognized aluminum as an acceptable variant, but still prefers the use of aluminium.