The
Electric Smelting and Aluminum Company, founded as
Cowles Electric Smelting and Aluminum Company, and
Cowles Syndicate Company, Limited formed in the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
during the mid-1880s to extract and supply valuable metals. Founded by two brothers from
OhioOhio is a Midwestern state in the United States. The 34th largest state by area in the U.S.,it is the 7th‑most populous with over 11.5 million residents, containing several major American cities and seven metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more.The state's capital is Columbus...
, the Cowles companies are remembered for producing
alloyAn alloy is a mixture or metallic solid solution composed of two or more elements. Complete solid solution alloys give single solid phase microstructure, while partial solutions give two or more phases that may or may not be homogeneous in distribution, depending on thermal history...
s in quantity sufficient for commerce. Their
furnaceA furnace is a device used for heating. The name derives from Latin fornax, oven.In American English and Canadian English, the term furnace on its own is generally used to describe household heating systems based on a central furnace , and sometimes as a synonym for kiln, a device used in the...
s were
electric arcAn electric arc is an electrical breakdown of a gas which produces an ongoing plasma discharge, resulting from a current flowing through normally nonconductive media such as air. A synonym is arc discharge. An arc discharge is characterized by a lower voltage than a glow discharge, and relies on...
smelterSmelting is a form of extractive metallurgy; its main use is to produce a metal from its ore. This includes iron extraction from iron ore, and copper extraction and other base metals from their ores...
s, one of the first viable methods for extracting metals.
The businesses of the era dramatically increased the supply of
aluminiumAluminium 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....
, a plentiful resource not found in nature in pure form, and reduced its price. The Cowles process was the immediate predecessor to the
Hall-Héroult processThe Hall–Héroult process is the major industrial process for the production of aluminium. It involves dissolving alumina in molten cryolite, and electrolysing the molten salt bath to obtain pure aluminium metal.-Process:...
—today in nearly universal use more than a century after it was discovered by
Charles Martin HallCharles 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
Paul HéroultThe 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...
and adapted by others including
Karl BayerKarl Josef Bayer was an Austrian chemist who invented the Bayer process of extracting alumina from bauxite, essential to this day to the economical production of aluminium....
. Because of the patent landscape, the Cowles companies found themselves in court. Judges eventually acknowledged their innovations many years after the companies formed, and one brother received two separate settlements.
Early years
Eugene H. Cowles and Alfred H. Cowles, sons of newspaper publisher
Edwin CowlesEdwin Cowles , born in Austinburg, was the publisher of The Cleveland Leader, Vice-President of the 1884 Republican National Convention, postmaster of Cleveland, April 4, 1861 - July 11, 1865, and elder brother of Alfred Cowles, Sr., also a newspaper publisher.-References:...
of
Cleveland, OhioCleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The city is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately west of the Pennsylvania border...
built high temperature
furnaceSmelting is a form of extractive metallurgy; its main use is to produce a metal from its ore. This includes iron extraction from iron ore, and copper extraction and other base metals from their ores...
s during the late 1880s in Lockport, New York and in
Stoke-upon-TrentStoke-upon-Trent, commonly called Stoke or Stoke town, is a component town of the city of Stoke-on-Trent, in the ceremonial county of Staffordshire, England....
in England based on the furnace of
Carl Wilhelm SiemensCarl Wilhelm Siemens was a German born engineer who for most of his life worked in Britain and later became a British subject.-Biography:...
. Charles F. Mabery, at the time of what is today the
Case School of EngineeringThe Case School of Engineering is the engineering school at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. It traces its roots to the 1880 founding of the Case School of Applied Science. The school became the Case Institute of Technology in 1947 until merging with Western Reserve University in...
, contributed expertise in chemistry.
The family had purchased a
copperCopper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu and atomic number 29. It is a ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. Pure copper is soft and malleable; an exposed surface has a reddish-orange tarnish...
zincZinc , or spelter , is a metallic chemical element; it has the symbol Zn and atomic number 30. It is the first element in group 12 of the periodic table. Zinc is, in some respects, chemically similar to magnesium, because its ion is of similar size and its only common oxidation state is +2...
mine on the
Pecos RiverThe headwaters of the Pecos River are located north of Pecos, New Mexico, United States, at an elevation of over 12,000 feet on the western slope of the Sangre de Cristo mountain range in Mora County. The river flows for through the eastern portion of that state and neighboring Texas before it...
in
New MexicoNew Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...
in 1883. Eugene that year designed a furnace to extract zinc from the mine's ores. Two young employees were testing four furnaces in a Cleveland laboratory by 1885. Their first plant was built to extract
aluminiumAluminium 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....
, in 1886 using
hydropowerHydropower, hydraulic power, hydrokinetic power or water power is power that is derived from the force or energy of falling water, which may be harnessed for useful purposes. Since ancient times, hydropower has been used for irrigation and the operation of various mechanical devices, such as...
from a tailrace of
Niagara FallsThe Niagara Falls, located on the Niagara River draining Lake Erie into Lake Ontario, is the collective name for the Horseshoe Falls and the adjacent American Falls along with the comparatively small Bridal Veil Falls, which combined form the highest flow rate of any waterfalls in the world and has...
on the
Niagara RiverThe Niagara River flows north from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario. It forms part of the border between the Province of Ontario in Canada and New York State in the United States. There are differing theories as to the origin of the name of the river...
.
Adolphe Minet wrote a sympathetic assessment twenty years later in 1905 from the perspective of
ParisParis is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. The Cowles furnace was electrochemical, one of two kinds of processes applied to producing aluminum during the 19th century, and belonged to the electrothermic group that includes Héroult (alloys), Brin, Bessemer, Stephanite and Moissan (carbide). Minet thought Cowles was the first great advance in
electrometallurgyMetallurgy is a domain of materials science that studies the physical and chemical behavior of metallic elements, their intermetallic compounds, and their mixtures, which are called alloys. It is also the technology of metals: the way in which science is applied to their practical use...
at least for many years, calling it a "practical" furnace yielding alloy up to 20 percent aluminum. The first was begun in 1884 and the best was tested in Cleveland in 1886. Minet gave the real credit though to other
chemistA chemist is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties such as density and acidity. Chemists carefully describe the properties they study in terms of quantities, with detail on the level of molecules and their component atoms...
s who saw how to produce "
pure aluminum".
William FrishmuthWilliam Frishmuth was a German-born American architect and metallurgist.William Frishmuth was born Johan Wilhelm Gottfreid Frishmuth in Coburg, Germany in 1830. Aluminum is a metal not found in a pure state in nature. The first patent for refining aluminum by electrolysis was granted to...
, who as the sole aluminium supplier in the United States built the
Washington MonumentThe Washington Monument is an obelisk near the west end of the National Mall in Washington, D.C., built to commemorate the first U.S. president, General George Washington...
's aluminum cap in 1884, was one among those who worried that "foreign capitalists" were about to control the world aluminium market.
Charles Martin HallCharles 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...
was a graduate of
Oberlin CollegeOberlin 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...
in Ohio who had discovered in February 1886 an electrolytic process for aluminum extraction. His patent application in July collided with
Paul HéroultThe 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...
's application for the same idea, "electrolysis of alumina in cryolite" and for which Héroult had received the patent in
FranceThe French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
in April. Hall proved his February date and was awarded the patent in the U.S. Hall made a licensing agreement and worked with the Cowles at the facility in Lockport with the hopes of moving his ideas from the laboratory into production.
Cowles did not choose to use the Hall patent. Their reason is unclear—some in Lockport remember it as disagreement about "external heat and copper electrodes" and "internally heated furnace and carbon electrodes", and
AlcoaAlcoa 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...
culture remembers it as an attempt to "suppress his new process by buying him out". Hall left after one year, in July 1888, to found the Pittsburgh Reduction Company which today is named Alcoa.
Later years
In 1891 after Cowles began to advertise "pure aluminum" they were sued by the Pittsburgh Reduction Company. The judge announced his decision in January 1893, finding them to be infringing the patent of Hall and having gained knowledge of his process by hiring away a chemist named Hobbs who was the foreman in Pittsburgh. In 1903 the Cowles won a countersuit. The surviving brother Alfred chose to stop work on aluminum and Cowles received royalties and a
US$The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
1.35 million payment in settlement. The appeal said the patent application of
Charles S. BradleyCharles Smith Bradley was a lawyer and legal scholar. He served as chief justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court between 1866 and 1868.-Biography:...
which Cowles had acquired in 1885 and Alcoa had acquired from Cowles in 1904 hinted at an internally rather than externally heated furnace.
The Cowles facility in England became part of
British AluminiumThe aluminium producer British Aluminium Ltd was originally formed as the British Aluminium Company Ltd on 7 May 1894 and was subsequently known as British Alcan Aluminium Plc...
in the late 1880s. In 1893, after Eugene's death, Maybery questioned a presentation that to him indicated the Cowles patents were infringed by the
carborundumSilicon carbide , also known as carborundum, is a compound of silicon and carbon with chemical formula SiC. It occurs in nature as the extremely rare mineral moissanite. Silicon carbide powder has been mass-produced since 1893 for use as an abrasive...
process of
Edward AchesonEdward Goodrich Acheson was an American chemist. Born in Washington, Pennsylvania, he was the inventor of carborundum, and later a manufacturer of carborundum and graphite. Thomas Edison put him to work on September 12, 1880 at his Menlo Park, New Jersey laboratory under John Kruesi...
. In 1900 Cowles received a $300,000 payment from the carborundum company. The judges' decision gave "priority broadly to the Messrs. Cowles for reducing ores and other substances by the incandescent method".
Influence
The achievements of Hall in the U.S. and of Héroult in
EuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
, and their influence on aluminum companies, some through Héroult's Société Electrometallurgique Française, have been called one of the greatest events in metallurgy. Over ten years, aluminum output in the U.S. increased by 100,000 times and its price dropped to about 2% of its cost before their discovery. Cowles engineered a separate venture and did not share that glory, but sometimes the brothers are credited with envisioning and promoting what was the beginning of electrical smelting on a large scale.