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Ohio inventions and firsts · Invention · 1886

Hall process for aluminum

On February 23, 1886 Charles Martin Hall, 22, produced aluminum by passing current through alumina dissolved in cryolite in a woodshed behind his family home in Oberlin. Paul Heroult found the same method independently.

At a glance

Year
1886
By
Charles Martin Hall
Company
Pittsburgh Reduction Company (later Alcoa)
Place
Oberlin, Lorain County ZIP 44074 · Oberlin · Lorain County
Patent
US 400,766 US 400,766 (issued Apr 2 1889; Hall filed first patent July 9 1886)

The story

Aluminum was once one of the rarest metals. It is common in the ground but locked up in compounds, and getting it out was so costly that it was treated as a luxury. A teacher at Oberlin College, Professor Frank Fanning Jewett, showed his students aluminum samples and remarked that whoever found a cheap way to make it would make a fortune.

One student, Charles Martin Hall, took that to heart. On February 23, 1886, in a woodshed behind his family home in Oberlin, with help from his sister Julia, he passed an electric current through alumina dissolved in cryolite and made aluminum. He was 22. A Frenchman, Paul Heroult, found the same method independently, which is why it is called the Hall-Heroult process.

Hall's work went into business in Pittsburgh, not Ohio. He co-founded the Pittsburgh Reduction Company in 1888 with Alfred E. Hunt and others; it later became Alcoa. The sources say the process cut the cost of aluminum by a factor of 200, and by 1900 annual production reached about 8,000 short tons.

Hall died unmarried on December 27, 1914, in Daytona, Florida, at age 51. He left much of his fortune to Oberlin and other causes. Today Oberlin College has an aluminum statue of him, and the Oberlin Heritage Center shows a re-creation of the 1886 woodshed experiment.

Timeline

  • 1886-02-23: Hall makes aluminum by electrolysis in a woodshed behind his family home. (Oberlin, OH) source
  • 1886-07-09: Hall files his first patent. source
  • 1888: Hall co-founds the Pittsburgh Reduction Company, later Alcoa. (Pittsburgh, PA) source
  • 1898: Hall is elected to the American Philosophical Society. source
  • 1900: Annual U.S. aluminum production reaches about 8,000 short tons. source
  • 1911: Hall receives the Perkin Medal. source
  • 1914-12-27: Hall dies in Daytona, Florida, at age 51. (Daytona, FL) source

What it changed

  • The process cut the cost of aluminum by about 200 times.
  • Annual production reached about 8,000 short tons by 1900.
  • The company Hall co-founded became Alcoa.

Why it matters

Founded Alcoa; made aluminum a common metal.

Worth knowing

Alcoa was founded in Pittsburgh with Alfred E. Hunt, not in Ohio.

Places in Ohio to see

Further reading

Sources

Confidence. High: the main facts were confirmed in sources we opened.