Alcoa

Alcoa Corporation (an acronym for "Aluminum Company of America") is a Pittsburgh-based industrial corporation. It is the world's eighth-largest producer of aluminum. Alcoa conducts operations in 10 countries. Alcoa is a major producer of primary aluminum, fabricated aluminum, and alumina combined, through its active and growing participation in all major aspects of the industry: technology, mining, refining, smelting, fabricating, and recycling. On November 1, 2016, Alcoa Inc. split into two entities: a new one called Alcoa Corporation, which is engaged in the mining and manufacture of raw aluminum, and the renaming of Alcoa Inc. to Arconic Inc., which processes aluminum and other metals. In 1886, Charles Martin Hall, a graduate of Oberlin College, discovered the process of smelting aluminum, almost simultaneously with Paul Héroult in France. He realized that by passing an electric current through a bath of cryolite and aluminum oxide, the then semi-rare metal aluminum remained as a byproduct. This discovery, now called the Hall–Héroult process, along with the Bayer process, are the dominant processes for production of aluminum from bauxite ore. Probably fewer than ten sites in the United States and Europe produced any aluminum at the time. In 1887, Hall made an agreement to try his process at the Electric Smelting and Aluminum Company plant in Lockport, New York, but it was not used and Hall left after one year, teaming up with Alfred E. Hunt to form a new company. After graduating from Amherst College in 1888, Arthur Vining Davis joined the new venture because Arthur's father knew Alfred Hunt. At the time, aluminum sold at almost $5 per pound, making it too expensive to be used commercially. They were determined to lower the cost of production using Charles Hall's ideas; Hall, Davis and others worked 12-hour days together for months on the experiments. Their first commercial aluminum pour was on Thanksgiving Day in 1888. The Pittsburgh Reduction Company began with an experimental smelting plant on Smallman Street in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with Hunt as president and Hall vice president.