Originally Posted by
clasher
They also made
cast aluminum frames back in the 1890s, the link goes to an 1896 lu-mi-num bike. Crazy stuff.
Thanks for that incredible bit of history.
That is likely to be as far back as it goes -between 1885 and 1895 the price of aluminium dopped by about 95% due to the invention of efficient smelting methods (by Hall in the US and Herault in France).
The reason this is significant is that before this development raw aluminium cost about GBP 3000 per tonne, and that's in 1880s quid. In modern money that's about GBP 200,000 which is more than USD 300,000. By 1896 the price was down to GBP 160 per tonne, about USD 10,000 in modern money. Today's price is about 1/4 that.