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41 ADVANCED MATERIALS & PROCESSES • SEPTEMBER 2014
discuss forming a company to support Hall’s experi-
ments in scaling up the process to pilot production.
Hall joined the group a week later when a second
meeting was held with Hunt presiding. This meeting
of Hall, Cole, Hunt, and a small group of Pittsburgh
men known to Hunt from the steel industry and from
his testing laboratory formed the technical and finan-
cial support of what would become the American
aluminum industry. Hunt and the other financial
supporters agreed to organize an entity called The
Pittsburgh Reduction Co. and to raise $20,000 to
build and equip a pilot plant to demonstrate the value
of Hall’s process for producing low-cost aluminum.
Next to Hall, Hunt was the most important man
involved in developing aluminum as a commercial
business. While Hall and others were primarily in-
terested in technology and production, Hunt car-
ried the burden of financing, managing, marketing,
and selling the product. Alfred Ephrehem Hunt was
born in Massachusetts in 1856 and graduated from
MIT in mining and metallurgy in 1876. In 1883, he
and George Clapp bought out the owners of The
Pittsburgh Testing Laboratory and renamed it Hunt
and Clapp.
The pilot plant
Hall and Cole built a pilot plant on Smallman
Street in Pittsburgh and began to set up reduction
cells and a motor-generator set to provide electricity.
Their first production run after numerous startup
problems yielded a few marble-sized particles on
Thanksgiving Day 1888. Thus, the modern world of
aluminum was born.
It turned out that Hall and Cole were not com-
patible as fellow workers in running the pilot plant,
so Cole was replaced by a young worker from Hunt’s
testing laboratory, Arthur Vining Davis. Hall and
Davis soon increased production at the pilot plant
to 50 pounds per day, selling at $8 per pound. By
adding two new dynamos, production increased to
450 pounds per day, but the price had dropped to
$2 per pound. Realizing the need to achieve produc-
tion levels to obtain economies of scale, and in need
of funds to meet daily obligations, the company’s
principals approached the Mellon Bank for a $4000
loan. The Mellon brothers, Andrew and Robert,
supplied a larger loan of $25,000 and later took a po-
sition in the company by buying 60 shares from Hall
at $100 per share.
The move to New Kensington
The Pittsburgh Reduction Co. soon outgrew the
pilot plant on Smallman Street and the Mellon
brothers encouraged them to locate a production
plant in New Kensington, northeast of Pittsburgh.
By now, Hall had discovered that by increasing the
size of the reduction pots and therefore the electric
current, he could maintain the heat to keep the
molten bath at the necessary temperature without
an outside heat source. In addition, after scaling up
the operation, less energy was needed per pound of
aluminum produced. The Mellons purchased a
stock offering at this time of 500 shares at $60 per
share. This allowed them seats on the board of di-
rectors. The Mellons were now insiders and not
simply bankers providing loans.
For more information:
Charles R. Simcoe can be reached at .
For more metallurgical history, visit .
Andrew Mellon.
Courtesy of
Carnegie Museum
of Art, Historic
Pittsburgh image
collection.
Arthur Vining Davis.
Courtesy of
.
An aluminum plaque at 3220 Smallman Street, Pittsburgh,
commemorates the birthplace of aluminum. Courtesy of .
Bauxite ore. U.S. public domain image.
Interior of the Smallman Street works of the Pittsburgh
Reduction Co., circa 1889. Courtesy of .