Development began in 1931, when T. Mishima in Japan discovered an iron-nickel-aluminium magnet with about 400 oersteds coercivity, roughly twice the best magnet steels of the era.
Alnico was the strongest type of permanent magnet before the rare-earth magnets of the 1970s, and today only neodymium and samarium-cobalt magnets exceed it.
Its Curie temperature is around 800 °C, remanence can exceed 12,000 G (1.2 T) and its maximum energy product reaches 5.5 MG·Oe, serving electric motors, guitar pickups, microphones and loudspeakers.