In the mid-1880s, aluminum was a semiprecious metal, rarer than silver. Total US production in 1884 was pounds (56.75 kg.)
At Oberlin College in Ohio, Professor Frank Jewett showed his chemistry students a small piece of aluminum and told them that whoever discovered an economic way of producing the metal would become rich.

One of the students, Charles Martin Hall, had become accustomed to experimenting with minerals since the age of 12, transforming a small shed behind his house into a rustic laboratory.

After graduation, he continued with his experiments in the shed. He learned how to obtain aluminum oxide-alumina and fabricated his own carbon pot with a cryolite bath containing alumina and passed an electric current over it.

A Historic Beginning 
The result was a solidified mass which he left to cool, and then shattered it with a hammer. And various pellets of pure aluminum appeared.

It was a memorable discovery. But to continue, Hall would need money. He discovered his financial supporters in the vicinity of Pittsburgh - a group of six industrialists led by Alfred E. Hunt.

These entrepreneurs founded the Pittsburgh Reduction Company and constructed a small factory in what is now the Strip District of Pittsburgh. On Thanksgiving Day in 1998, Hall and his first employee, Arthur Vining Davis, produced the first commercial aluminum using the Hall technology.

Metal Without a Market
In a short time the ingots were piled high, but where were the consumers? Manufacturers hesitated in using a different metal. To show the way, Davis began to make certain manufactured products, beginning with an aluminum teapot.

Meanwhile, Hall continued to improve his process and develop alloys. He succeeded in reducing the price of an aluminum ingot from $4.96 per pound in 1888 to 78 cents in 1893.

The business grew and aluminum products soon included kitchen utensils, foil, wires and electric cables, car bodywork and motor parts used in the first flight by the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk.

Time for a New Name 
By around 1907, the company had grown to the point of owning bauxite mines in Arkansas, a refinery in Illinois and three aluminum smelters in New York and Canada. The owners changed the company' name to something more appropriate - Aluminum Company of America. Later, when the company became increasingly globalized, the name was changed to Alcoa Inc.

By the end of the 1930's, one pound of aluminum cost 20 cents, and the company had recorded more than 2,000 uses for the product.

Then came the Second World War. The demand for aluminum doubled, and the same happened with the Alcoa production. But a lot 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. Since competition intensified, Alcoa reacted by expanding its technology base; improving processes; reducing costs; expanding product lines, markets and global operations; and developing an unprecedented worldwide base of natural resources

In the last years before the turn-of-the-century, Alcoa significantly increased its global presence through internal growth, companies around the world and large-scale acquisitions in Europe and the United States.

Aluminum became the material selected to adequately envelop a new generation of aircraft and cars, and thousands of modern products that can now the manufactured stronger, safer, lighter, more economic in energy 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.

Alcoa's history

Click below for a brief, interactive overview of Alcoa's first 120 years

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