Charles Martin Hall

Charles Martin Hall
Charles Martin Hall
Born	December 6, 1863 Thompson, Ohio
Died	December 27, 1914 (1914-12-28) (aged 51) Daytona, Florida
Nationality	United States
Engineering career
Significant advance	Hall-Héroult process
Awards	Perkin Medal (1911)

Charles Martin Hall (December 6, 1863 – December 27, 1914) was an American inventor, businessman, and chemist. He is best known for his invention in 1886 of an inexpensive method for producing aluminum, which became the first metal to attain widespread use since the prehistoric discovery of iron. He was one of the founders of ALCOA. Alfred E. Hunt, 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, Hunt raised $20,000 to launch the Pittsburgh Reduction Company which was later renamed Aluminum Company of America and shortened to Alcoa.

Charles Martin Hall was born to Herman Bassett Hall and Sophronia H. Brooks on December 6, 1863 in Thompson, Ohio. Charles' father Herman graduated from Oberlin College in 1847, and studied for three years at the Oberlin Theological Seminary, where he met his future wife Sophronia Brooks. They married in 1849, and the next ten years were spent in missionary work in Jamaica, where the first five of their eight children were born. They returned to Ohio in 1860, when the outbreak of the Civil War forced the closing of foreign missions. Charles Hall had two brothers and five sisters; one brother died in infancy. One of his sisters was chemist Julia Brainerd Hall (1859–1925), who helped him in his research.

Hall began his education at home, and was taught to read at an early age by his mother. At the age of six, he was using his father's 1840's college chemistry book as a reader. At age 8, he entered public school, and progressed rapidly.

His family moved to Oberlin, Ohio in 1873. He spent three years at Oberlin High School (Ohio), and a year at Oberlin Academy in preparation for college. During this time he demonstrated his aptitude for chemistry and invention, carrying out experiments in the kitchen and the woodshed attached to his house. In 1880, at the age of 16, he enrolled at Oberlin College.