For how long has aluminium been known as ''aluminum'' in the US - or was it ever thus?

Gnomon

Aluminium was discovered by Sir Humphry Davy. Because it was extracted from alum, he originally called it alumium, then aluminum, before finally setttling on aluminium. As far as I know, it's been called aluminum in the States ever since. Feb 11 03, 9:36 PM

sequoianoir

Basically same Humphrey Davy story here but also a reference to the USA. http://www.quinion.com/words/articles/aluminium.htm In the USA%97perhaps oddly in view of its later history%97the standard spelling was aluminium right from the start. This is the only form given in Noah Webster's Dictionary of 1828, and seems to have been standard among US chemists throughout most of the nineteenth {century;} it was the preferred version in The Century Dictionary of 1889 and is the only spelling given in the Webster Unabridged Dictionary of 1913. However, there is evidence that the spelling without the final i was used in various trades and professions in the US from the 1830s onwards and that by the 1870s it had become the more common one in American writing generally. The official change in the US to the %96um spelling happened quite late: the American Chemical Society only adopted it in 1925. The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) officially standardised on aluminium in 1990, though this has done nothing, of course, to change the way people in the US spell it for day to day purposes. Feb 11 03, 10:00 PM

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