Pittsburgh Reduction Company / Alcoa founding

Charles Martin Hall's patent victory over Paul Héroult by hours; founding of Pittsburgh Reduction Company → Alcoa; the trust-busters' breakup of the Alcoa-Boeing-Pratt & Whitney combine.

Hall in the United States and Paul Héroult in France both tried putting electricity through molten cryolite that had dissolved aluminum oxide, and they were able to make metal. They had a big patent fight. It's like days or hours apart in terms of their filing at the patent office. Hall won by hours or days. All of a sudden, a new economical way to make aluminum, the price dropped. Charles Martin Hall created a company called the Pittsburgh Reduction Company. He was from Ohio, but he had Andrew Mellon and other people from Pittsburgh as his backers. They started the Pittsburgh Reduction Company, and it later changed its name to the Aluminum Corporation of America, which we now know as Alcoa.