The first aluminium wires appeared in the late 19th century in the USA. In 1880 in Chicago, the head of a train station noticed that all of the outdoor copper wires were deteriorating quickly. This, he concluded was down to fact that the copper was being corroded by locomotive smoke. The reason he decided to use aluminium as a substitute is unknown, but a copper wire several hundreds metre long was replaced with an aluminium one that turned out to be far more durable despite the fact that the number of trains at the station grew each year.