This site claims that Davy proposed calling it aluminum before it vwas even actually isolated:
From my reading of those cites I don’t think Webster can be blamed. It seems both forms were in common use in America right up until the early 20th century, when aluminum took over because that’s what the people producing it called it:
Might as well bring up the webelements version, which mentions the standards bodies involved:
So there you go. You lot win with “sulfur”; we win with “aluminium” and “caesium” (at least as far as IUPAC is concerned).
2-1 to the Brits! In your face! (If we leave out that other historical stuff…)
I think **Polycarp **was referring to the OP proper rather than your post, wherein the OP uses the rhetorical device of presuming a conclusion in the form of a question. (GQ is not Jeopardy :))
Mangetout writes:
> In many, probably most cases, differences in spelling between UK and US
> English are the result of change on the American side.
That isn’t really clear to me. It appears that spelling in English was quite variable in the mid-eighteenth century. In some cases American spelling settled on one of the possible variants while British spelling settled on another variant. There are still lots of inconsistencies in spelling rules on both sides:
He used Ninjainium.
Otherwise known as the element of surprise.
Fear and surprise.
I didn’t expect that.
Exceptions and inconsistencies aside, you should read that link a bit closer - it lists many cases where differences in spelling (and critically to my point in post #16, most of the very commonly-encountered differences) involve American spelling reform.
Sulfur still looks wrong to me. We had this science class in 7th grade where I kept spelling it as “sulphur” or sulphuric acid which just looks more correct to me. Not sure where I got that from, but once I did it stuck.
It’s pronounced, “13.”
All elements should be referred to by their number.
Cooking is correct on my intent here. Your post was not yet up when I went to compose mine,Cal. Sorry f it inadvertently sounded like criticism of you.
Just my wild ass guess, I mean, learned opinion, but I can’t help think that since America first mass produced it, we inevitably went with calling it a-lu-min-um simply because al-u-min-ee-um is a fucking annoying tongue-twister to say! 
Don’t get me started on garage, controversy, or pedophile…
There’s an old Andy Hardy film from the 1930s, I forget which one, in which they use “aluminium.” A minor plot line is that someone is trying to get Judge Hardy to invest in this new metal aluminium. So for a while at least, Americans did use what is now the British term.
I always say it the first way regardless of how it is spelled, usually not noticing the extra “i”.
On the other hand, something that really bugs me is when people use “mebibyte” instead of “megabyte” (WTF is a mebibyte; except for hard drives, which is probably the reason for this, I think everybody knows that 1 MB is referring to 2^20), same for gibibyte and so on (hey, Firefox underlines those weird spellings, same for aluminium!).
Aside from his involvement with alumium/aluminum/aluminium, Sir Humphrey Davy is the subject of one of the more famous clerihews:
Ununobtainium. :mad: