I had heard a totally different story (something about a botched trademark application) on “aluminum” vs. “aluminium” and the story above was new to me. So I googled it and immediately found: World Wide Words: Aluminium versus aluminum. To summarize, Davy first chose “aluminum” and then changed. Both were used in the US until inexpensive refinement methods were found and after that the use of “aluminium” in the US declined and gradually disappeared until the ACS settled on “aluminum” in 1925. So it had nothing to do with “platinum” and nothing to do with a botched trademark application.
Until we fund a new, stable and non-toxic element for Tony Stark’s power supply, the search must continue.
Here’s the relevant passage from The Disappearing Spoon:
“When Charles Hall [who invented the process using electrical current to separate pure aluminum from compounds] applied for patents, he used the extra i, too. However, when advertising his shiny metal, Hall was looser with the spelling. There’s debate about whether cutting the* i *was intentional or a fortuitous mistake, but when Hall saw ‘aluminum,’ he thought it was a brilliant coinage. He dropped the vowel permanently, and with it a syllable, which aligned his product with classy platinum.”
The author notes that the Washington Monument was capped with aluminum in 1884 because, at that time, it was the most expensive metal in the world.
Well, for one thing, flerovium is going to be used a lot by beginning chemist students. Unfortunately, they’ll be using it as a simple halogen.