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The Teacher Inspired And The Student Moved To Bless The Humanity
Aluminum was discovered early in the 1800s and by the middle of that century, crude methods were available for extracting it. Aluminum, a silvery-white metallic element, was discovered in 1825 by Danish chemist Hans Christian Orsted. It is the most abundant metal found in Earth's crust, comprising 8.3 percent of the crust's total weight. Its content in seawater, however, is as low as 0.01 gram per metric ton (0.01 part per million). The key isotope of aluminum is Al-27 with a natural abundance of 100 percent, but seven other isotopes are known, one of which is used as a radioactive tracer (Al-26). Aluminum is not found in its metallic state in nature; it is usually found as silicate, oxide, or hydrated oxide (bauxite). Its extraction from ore is difficult and expensive; aluminum is therefore commonly recycled, the energy of recycling being a mere 5 percent of the energy needed to extract the metal.
Aluminum is lightweight, ductile, and easily machined. It is protected by an oxide film from reacting with air and water, and is therefore rust-resistant. It is one of the lightest metals but is quite tough and most helpful in metallurgy, transportation (e.g., aircraft, automobiles, railroad cars, and boats), and architecture (e.g., window frames and decorative ornaments). It is also used in the manufacture of cooking gear because it is a good conductor of heat. Aluminum foils as thin as 0.18 millimeter are a household convenience, protecting food from spoiling and providing insulation. Aluminum-made beverage cans are widely manufactured. The average human body contains about 35 milligrams aluminum, but no known biological role has been established for it; it is, however, suspected to be a factor in the development of Alzheimer's disease.
Although aluminum is now widely used as a structural material, this was not always the case. Though common in Earth's crust, aluminum is difficult to extract from its ore because it is a very reactive metal. Before 1886, aluminum was a semiprecious metal comparable in price to silver. Although the element had been discovered in 1825 and had been investigated by many European scientists, the only way to prepare the metal was by the complex and difficult process that culminated in reacting metallic sodium with aluminum chloride. The rarity and importance of aluminium is realized from the fact that in 1852, at $545 a pound, it was a precious metal that only the truly wealthy could afford. Napoleon III had a baby rattle and other small objects made of aluminum. The metal was so rare and unique that in 1855 small bars of aluminum were exhibited at the Paris Exhibition alongside the crown jewels of France.
During the construction of the Washington Monument; aluminum was cast into a nine inch high pyramid which was to be placed atop the obelisk as an ornament and lightening rod. Made before Alcoa, without the Hall process, this aluminum cap cost $225, which would be roughly $4,000 today. It weighed 100 ounces, which works out to $640 a pound. When the Washington Monument was completed in 1884, the pyramid of this costly aluminum was placed as an ornament at the very top. Before its installation the cap was on display on the floor at Tiffany's in New York City, where customers were invited to "step over the top of the Washington Monument."It also served as the tip of the lightning rod system, a practical application of the high electrical conductivity and corrosion resistance of this remarkable metal. However, economical methods were needed to wrest aluminum from its abundant minerals.
Interestingly two men, Frank Jewett and Charles Hall, with a common interest in aluminum metal met on the campus of Oberlin College near Cleveland, Ohio, in 1880. Frank Jewett was a world traveler and as well educated in chemical science as any American academic of his day. Charles Hall was a local youth, self-educated in science, who hoped to become a successful inventor and entrepreneur. Their association over the next five-and-one-half years led to the discovery of a practical process for making aluminum from its ore by an electric current. Within three more years, Hall was producing pure aluminum metal on an industrial scale. Aluminum, the curiosity, became a widely used material, and the younger man achieved his goal of a financially successful career in technology and industry.
Frank Fanning Jewett received his undergraduate education and did some graduate work in chemistry and mineralogy at Yale University. From 1873 to 1875, he continued his chemistry studies at the University of Gottingen in Germany. There he became well acquainted with current European science and became interested in the promise of aluminum. He met Professor Friedrich Wöhler, who had isolated aluminum as a metal in 1827 following H. C. Oersted's lead in 1825. Before Jewett returned to America in 1875 to become Oliver Wolcott Gibbs's private assistant at Harvard University, he obtained a sample of aluminum metal. In 1876, he was nominated by the president of Yale to teach science at the Imperial University in Tokyo, where he was one of a small group of Westerners. In 1880 at the age of 36, Jewett became the professor of chemistry and mineralogy at Oberlin College.
Charles Martin Hall was born in 1863 as the third son and sixth child of a Congregational minister. He was a studious child who first learned chemistry as a serious-minded youth in the town of Oberlin by reading a 1840s textbook, he found on the shelves of his minister father's study table. He also carried on experiments at home, the beginning of a lifelong enthusiasm for experimental work. An avid reader in many fields, he eagerly followed the popular invention literature in Scientific American.
Hall was already intrigued by the romance of aluminum when, as a 16-year-old freshman at Oberlin College in the fall of 1880, he went to the chemistry laboratory to obtain some items for his home laboratory. There he met Professor Jewett from whom Hall happened to have a class in which Frank Fanning Jewett showed a sample of the precious metal to the students. After a stirring lecture on the topic, he finished with, "Fame and fortune awaited the man who would find an inexpensive way to separate the metal from bauxite ore. Any person who discovers a process by which aluminum can be made on a commercial scale will not only bless humanity but also will make a fortune for himself." Inspired by such a win-win challenge, Hall reportedly said, "I'm going for that metal."
After graduating from Oberlin in June 1885, Hall continued his work in a woodshed behind his family home. The woodshed was really a summer kitchen attached to the back of the Hall home. There, starting with a blacksmith's forge and galvanic cells constructed from fruit jars, he began to investigate mixtures of aluminum and fluorine-containing minerals. Hall thought that if he could find a water free liquid which would dissolve aluminum oxide, he might be able to separate the metal by electrolysis. On February 10, 1886 he discovered that cryolite (a sodium aluminum fluoride) in its molten state would dissolve aluminum oxide. On February 16 he passed an electric current through the crucible, yet no aluminum was found. Hall reasoned that the problem was with the clay crucible, not with his process. Along with help from his sister (an Oberlin student) and continued guidance from Jewett, Hall discovered that alumina (Al2O3) and the mineral cryolite (Na3AlF6) fuse well and do so at a relatively low temperature (near 1,000°C [1,832°F]), compared to pure alumina. He lined the crucible with carbon and tried again. A direct electric current was passed through the molten cryolite-alumina solution for several hours. After months of work, Hall and his sister broke open their graphite crucible on February 23, 1886, to find tiny globules of a silvery metal—aluminum. Hall rushed to show them to Jewett, who confirmed his discovery. It was February 23, 1886. Hall was just 22 years old. The globules from this discovery are referred to as Alcoa's "crown jewels" and these same samples are preserved by Alcoa as the company's "crown jewels."
Hall's next move in his quest to "bless humanity and make a fortune for himself" was to make aluminum production commercially feasible and here began Alcoa's story with Charles Martin Hall. Hall knew that if he could discover this process, he could turn it into an industry. In fact Charles was interested in finding a way to make aluminum throughout his college days. Charles' sister Julia Brainerd Hall became his close associate and advisor. Some have said that Julia may have had more of hand in the invention than the record reveals. It is certain that she served as his assistant and was an excellent sounding board since she had also studied chemistry at Oberlin, which was quite unusual for a woman those days. Her biggest contribution may have been that she was responsible for the meticulous records of Hall's experiments. These records were later used to prove the priority of Hall's invention, and without them, there would have been no patent, and no Alcoa.
Charles started seeking financial backing to commercialize his process. His older brother George, who lived in New England, suggested that he come to Boston. Nothing developed there. His precious globules were looked upon as laboratory curiosities. After returning to Oberlin, Charles sought assistance from Alfred and Eugene Cowles, of Cowles Electric Smelting & Aluminum Company, which made alloys. They were already running a successful business having done much to develop the electric furnace. The Cowles brothers made an offer where Charles would work on the process for them for 90 days, with an option to buy the process and patents and make Charles a partner. They weren't interested, so the Cowles brothers did not exercise their option, and at the end of six months, Charles was back where he started.
Through his association with the Cowles brothers, Hall met Romaine C. Cole, a young businessman who recognized the value of Hall's invention and recommended contacting Capt. Alfred E. Hunt, one of the foremost metallurgists in the steel industry, located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Cole knew Hunt through some experimental work on aluminum that Cole had done for Hunt & Clapp's materials testing business. Hunt was so impressed with Hall's process that he called a preliminary meeting of five of his associates on July 31, 1888. The meeting was held at Hunt's Pittsburgh home and the first order of business was to select a name for the new company. The first name selected for the business was Pittsburgh Aluminium Company.
Hunt was originally from Boston and was only 33 years old at the time. The others Hunt gathered were also relatively young, all under 35 years old and all connected with the steel industry. In addition to Hunt's partner George H. Clapp, the others were Howard Lash, head of the Carbon Steel Company. Millard Hunsiker, sales manager for Carbon Steel. Robert Scott, superintendent of the 33rd Street Mill of Carnegie Steel, and W. S. Sample, chief chemist for Hunt and Clapp's Pittsburgh Testing Laboratory. On August 8, 1888 they agreed to put up $20,000, $5,000 at a time, on call, to build a pilot plant which was constructed on Smallman Street. From then on Hunt left the materials testing business in the hands of his partner Clapp and spent the remainder of his career with Alcoa.
On October 1, 1888, the enterprise was incorporated as The Pittsburgh Reduction Company. The name proved to be an unhappy choice, as it was often confused with another, similarly titled garbage disposal concern. In 1907 the name was changed to Aluminum Company of America, which it remained until 1999, when it was officially shortened to Alcoa. The first employee of the new Alcoa joined the band of entrepreneurs as a young man and devoted most of the rest of his life to the company. Arthur Vining Davis came to Pittsburgh in 1888 from Hyde Park, MA. He was fresh out of Amherst College and only 21 years old. His father, a church pastor, asked his former parishioner Capt. Hunt for help in finding young Arthur a suitable position. Hunt took on Davis at his Pittsburgh Testing Laboratory, but shortly thereafter, Hunt and Clapp decided that Davis was the perfect fellow to team up with Hall.
Hall's relationship with Romaine Cole proved fruitful. Cole, who was the much savvier businessman, had negotiated the agreement with Hunt and the other start-up investors which granted them 47% of the common stock of the start-up company. Upon receiving the financial backing of local industrialists, Hall and his employee Arthur Vining Davis produced the first commercial aluminum on Thanksgiving Day, 1888. There still remained complicated patent infringement cases to argue, but eventually Hall was victorious. A more serious challenge came from the independent co-discoverer of the process, Paul Héroult, a French chemist the same age as Hall performing basic research on aluminum-containing compounds. Héroult filed for a patent about the same time that Hall did, but again, Hall won the dispute over patent rights. Nevertheless, the electrolytic reduction of aluminum is rightly named the Hall-Héroult process, honoring both of its discoverers.
Once again, a chemical idea had turned industrial, as the price per pound of aluminum dropped from $4.86 in 1888 to $0.78 in 1893. In 1907 the company was reorganized as the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa), of which Hall was made a vice-president. But Hall and Cole did not work well together. Davis took over when Cole left and stayed for the next 69 years. In the beginning, Davis and Hall were each taking 12 hour shifts and soon the plant was making between 30 and 50 pounds of aluminum per day. These were selling at $8.00 a pound and were kept in an office safe, although someone remarked that there was no need to keep them in the safe, since they were having trouble selling the new metal and it was unlikely anyone would want to steal it.
As the business progressed, Hall stayed in the background doing research and Davis moved into the leadership role. It would be up to Davis to make a market for the metal that no one knew or wanted. In 1890, Davis borrowed some molds from the Griswold Company of Erie, PA, a manufacturer of cast iron cookware, and had some aluminum teakettles made. Mr. Griswold was impressed and placed an order for 2000 kettles from Davis, who tried to explain that he only wanted to sell Griswold the aluminum. Griswold would have none of it, and so Alcoa was forced into the fabricating business to prove that there was a market for this metal.
Amazingly when Hall was awarded the Perkin Medal in 1911 for his process, Héroult graciously traveled across the Atlantic to congratulate him at the ceremony. By the time of Hall's untimely death on December 27, 1914 at the age of 51, his estate was worth nearly 30 million dollars. Before his death Hall donated one-third of his fortune to a grateful Oberlin College, where today stands a life-sized statue of its benefactor, constructed entirely of aluminum.
About the Author
Dr. Badruddin Khan teaches Chemistry in the University of Kashmir, Srinagar, India.
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