Golden Aluminum history

The German chemist Friedrich Wöhler tried again in 1827, one year before he pioneered the field of organic chemistry by synthesizing urea.

The first researcher to claim to produce elemental aluminum by electrolysis was the German Robert Wilhelm von Bunsen, who by coincidence had taken Wöhler’s place as a chemistry teacher at the Higher Polytechnic School at Kassel in 1836.

The fact that cryolite dissolves alumina had actually been discovered by Deville in 1859, but other details on, for example, mixture heating and construction of the reactive electrode came later.

Hall’s French counterpart, Paul Louis-Toussaint Héroult, was born on 10 April 1863 in the small Normandy town of Thury-Harcourt.

Héroult’s father died suddenly in 1885, leaving the 22-year-old Paul in possession of the family tannery, including its steam engine.

Then on 9 February 1886 Hall discovered that cryolite (sodium hexafluoroaluminate, Na3AlF6), once heated beyond its melting point of 1,000ºC with his gasoline-powered furnace, dissolved alumina like sugar in coffee.

The company Hall helped found drove the price down to below $1 per pound by 1891, and when a lightweight aluminum crankcase for their engine enabled the Wright Brothers to take their famous first flight, the metal was about $0.30 per pound.

That partnership would lead to the formation of the Pittsburgh Reduction Company, which in 1907 became the Aluminum Company of America, and under its current name of Alcoa is the world’s largest producer of aluminum.