In the mid-1880s, aluminum was a semi-precious metal, scarcer than silver. Total U.S. production in 1884 was 125 pounds.
At Oberlin College in Ohio, Professor Frank Jewett showed his chemistry students a small piece of aluminum and told them that whoever could discover an economical way to make this metal would become rich.
One of those students, Charles Martin Hall, had been experimenting with minerals since he was 12 years old, turning a small woodshed behind his home into a crude laboratory.
After graduation, he continued his woodshed experiments. He learned how to make aluminum oxide–alumina–and he fashioned his own carbon crucible with a cryolite bath containing alumina and passed an electric current through it.
An Historic First
The result was a congealed mass which he allowed to cool, then shattered with a hammer. And there were several small pellets of pure aluminum.
It was a remarkable discovery. But to carry it forward, Hall would need money. He found his financial backers in nearby Pittsburgh–a group of six industrialists led by Alfred E. Hunt.
These venturers formed the Pittsburgh Reduction Company and built a small plant in what is now Pittsburgh's Strip District. On Thanksgiving Day, 1888, Hall and his first employee, Arthur Vining Davis, produced the first commercial aluminum using Hall's technology.
Metal Without a Market
Soon the ingots were piling up, but where were the customers? Manufacturers hesitated to use an unfamiliar metal. To show the way, Davis began to make a few fabricated products, starting with an aluminum teakettle.
Meanwhile, Hall kept improving his process and developing alloys. He managed to reduce the price of aluminum ingot from $4.86 a pound in 1888 to 78 cents in 1893.
Business grew, and aluminum products soon included cooking utensils, foil, electric wire and cable, auto bodies, and parts of the engine used in the Wright brothers' first flight at Kitty Hawk.
Time for a New Name
By 1907, the company had grown to include bauxite mines in Arkansas, a refinery in Illinois, and three aluminum smelters in New York and Canada. The owners changed the company's name to something more appropriate–Aluminum Company of America. Later, as the company became increasingly global, this changed to Alcoa Inc.
In the late 1930s a pound of aluminum cost 20 cents, and the company counted more than 2,000 uses for its products.
Then came World War II. Aluminum demand doubled, and so did Alcoa's production. But much of the new capacity was financed by the federal government, and after the war these plants were sold to competing companies.
Strategies for Change
In recent decades, the industry has grown dramatically. As competition intensified, Alcoa responded by broadening its technological base; perfecting processes; lowering costs; expanding product lines, markets and global operations; and developing an unprecedented worldwide base in natural resources.
In the years leading up to the turn of the century, Alcoa significantly enlarged its global presence through internal growth, worldwide partnerships, and major acquisitions in Europe and the U.S.
Aluminum has become the material of choice for convenient packaging for a new generation of aircraft and automobiles, and for thousands of modern products that can now be made stronger, safer, lighter, less energy-intensive, and more recyclable.
Everything has changed except this: From the first day to the present day, Alcoa has remained a world leader in aluminum production.
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Alcoa's history (timeline)
Click below for a brief, interactive overview of Alcoa's first 120 years.
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