Alfred E. Hunt
Encyclopedia
Alfred Ephraim Hunt was a 19th-century American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 metallurgist and industrialist best known for founding the company that would eventually become Alcoa
Alcoa
Alcoa Inc. is the world's third largest producer of aluminum, behind Rio Tinto Alcan and Rusal. From its operational headquarters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Alcoa conducts operations in 31 countries...

, the world's largest producer and distributor of aluminum
Aluminium
Aluminium or aluminum is a silvery white member of the boron group of chemical elements. It has the symbol Al, and its atomic number is 13. It is not soluble in water under normal circumstances....

.

Early life

Hunt was a New Englander by birth and graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...

 in 1876 with a degree in Metallurgy and Mining. His first several jobs kept him in New England, first in Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...

 with the Bay State Ironworks which was operating the first open hearth steel furnace
Open hearth furnace
Open hearth furnaces are one of a number of kinds of furnace where excess carbon and other impurities are burnt out of the pig iron to produce steel. Since steel is difficult to manufacture due to its high melting point, normal fuels and furnaces were insufficient and the open hearth furnace was...

 in the United States of America. From there, he would go on to Nashua
Nashua, New Hampshire
-Climate:-Demographics:As of the census of 2010, there were 86,494 people, 35,044 households, and 21,876 families residing in the city. The population density was 2,719.9 people per square mile . There were 37,168 housing units at an average density of 1,202.8 per square mile...

, New Hampshire
New Hampshire
New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian...

 to work for the Nashua Iron & Steel Company.

His career would eventually take him to Pittsburgh doing metallurgical work for the Pittsburgh Testing Laboratory, which he would acquire in partnership with the young chemist, George Hubbard Clapp
George Hubbard Clapp
George Hubbard Clapp was an American pioneer in the aluminum industry and also a numismatist.He was born on December 14 in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, now a part of Pittsburgh, the son of Delia Dennig Hubbard and DeWitt Clinton Clapp, an iron company executive. He graduated from the Western...

, in 1887. He was working there in 1888 when his acquaintance Romaine C. Cole brought a young man three years out of Oberlin College
Oberlin College
Oberlin College is a private liberal arts college in Oberlin, Ohio, noteworthy for having been the first American institution of higher learning to regularly admit female and black students. Connected to the college is the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the oldest continuously operating...

 to meet him.

Founding Alcoa

When Alfred E. Hunt became aware of Charles Martin Hall
Charles Martin Hall
Charles Martin Hall was an American inventor, music enthusiast, and chemist. He is best known for his invention in 1886 of an inexpensive method for producing aluminium, which became the first metal to attain widespread use since the prehistoric discovery of iron.-Early years:Charles Martin Hall...

 and his patent
Patent
A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....

 awarded two years earlier on a process for separating aluminum from common aluminum oxide through electrolysis
Electrolysis
In chemistry and manufacturing, electrolysis is a method of using a direct electric current to drive an otherwise non-spontaneous chemical reaction...

, he became very interested. Though aluminum is the most common metallic element in the Earth's crust at about 8%, it is very rare in its free form. ("aluminium", Britannica) At the time of this meeting in 1888, the price of aluminum was $4.86 per pound. This made it strictly a "laboratory metal" with minimal commercial and industrial use.

The process for aluminum separation discovered by Hall, called the Hall-Héroult process because of its near-simultaneous discovery by Paul Héroult
Paul Héroult
The French scientist Paul Héroult was the inventor of the aluminium electrolysis and of the electric steel furnace. He lived in Thury-Harcourt, Normandy.Christian Bickert said of him...

, provided a cheap and easy way to extract aluminum as a pure metal. Hunt realized that if he could create a market for this metal and control the patent on the process for extracting it from common materials that he'd have a substantial business on his hands.

Together with Charles Hall and a group of five other individuals including his partner at the Pittsburgh Testing Laboratory, George Hubbard Clapp, his chief chemist, W.S. Sample, Howard Lash, head of the Carbon Steel Company, Millard Hunsiker, sales manager for the Carbon Steel Company, and Robert Scott, a mill superintendent for the Carnegie Steel Company
Carnegie Steel Company
Carnegie Steel Company was a steel producing company created by Andrew Carnegie to manage business at his steel mills in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area in the late 19th century.-Creation:...

, Hunt raised $20,000 to launch the Pittsburgh Reduction Company which was later renamed Aluminum Company of America and shortened to Alcoa
Alcoa
Alcoa Inc. is the world's third largest producer of aluminum, behind Rio Tinto Alcan and Rusal. From its operational headquarters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Alcoa conducts operations in 31 countries...

.

The Pittsburgh Reduction Company was able to produce aluminum in unprecedented quantities. The price of aluminum dropped quickly from $4.86 per pound to $0.70 per pound. Hunt would serve as the fledgling company's first president from 1888 to 1899 (New York Times) and identify early markets for the metal ranging from materials for electric cables to cookware. Alcoa would become and remain the world's largest producer of aluminum.

Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States....

's Hunt Library was donated by Alfred's son Roy. The library features aluminum as its primary building material.

Later years

With the outbreak of the Spanish American War, Hunt helped to organize Battery B, a cavalry division of the Pennsylvania National Guard
Pennsylvania National Guard
The Pennsylvania National Guard is composed of the Pennsylvania Army National Guard and the Pennsylvania Air National Guard. It is one of the largest National Guards in the nation. It has the largest Army National Guard of all the states and the fourth largest Air National Guard. These forces are...

, and was elected its first captain. (Hunt 1951, 3) He fought in the Puerto Rican
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...

 theater of operation. He returned from the war in 1898 and died one year later from complications from the malaria
Malaria
Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans and other animals caused by eukaryotic protists of the genus Plasmodium. The disease results from the multiplication of Plasmodium parasites within red blood cells, causing symptoms that typically include fever and headache, in severe cases...

he had contracted during the war.

Publications

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