The discovery of Duralumin took place in a military context. The Prussian engineer Alfred Wilm had been mandated in Neubabelsberg near Berlin to develop such an improved alloy, the name of which is as much due to the fact that it is hard as to the fact it has first been industrially produced in Düren. International cooperations as well as harsh competitions have accompanied the first researches on this alloy in the beginning of the twentieth century.