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stable into a professor’s residence. The first floor of this building
came to house the Physics Collection while the floors above this
became H. C. Oersted’s professorial residence. In the rebuilt, two-
storied chemical laboratory in the court-yard H. C. Oersted, the
chemist, in 1824 worked out the first method for producing free
aluminium metal with aluminium chloride as an intermediate
stage. In this century nothing was known as to the situation o f this
laboratory. The forgotten building was pulled down in 1914, and it
remained hidden in the past. It has now been identified in the
painting shown on p. 101 and by means of a snapshot from 1914.
Proof o f an extension to the laboratory between 1829 and 1860 is
given, and a drawing of this as an “L ” is included.
After 1860 extension from 1829 was pulled down, and the labo
ratory building again came to have one wing only, as was the case
when it was put up in 1823. As already mentioned it was pulled
down in 1914 to make room for future university extensions.
9
Oersted’s discovery of aluminium.
Oersted’s discovery of 1825 by which he showed the element alu
minium can be produced as free metal, was not internationally
published as was the case with his discovery of electromagnetism
in 1820. His publication only appeared in Danish. See page 106. The
first stage is expressed as AI
2
O
3
+
3
C +
3
CI
2
=
2
AICI
3
+ 3CO at the
temperature af incandescence.The next stage: Oersted reduced this
anhydrous chloride with potassium as amalgam AlCLs + 3K =
3KC1 + Al. The mercury was distilled off. The apparatus is shown
here. The latter together with the further development is thoroughly
dealt with in this book. Wøhler paid a visit to Oersted in Copen
hagen, and as Oersted had no time nor the money for research
work, he suggested that Wøhler should continue his work on the
understanding that the honour of the discovery remained with
Oersted himself. Nevertheless Wøhler published the discovery in
1827 without mentioning Oersted’s name. When in this century
aluminium became of such great importance all over the world,
Dr. Fogh (in 1919 - foliowing Oersted’s description of his experi-
ment —made a control experiment with a satisfactory result. A
detailed account of this exists in German (by Professor Haas), and
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