Gratitude for America

  • Home
  • Gratitude for America

Gratitude for America Contact information, map and directions, contact form, opening hours, services, ratings, photos, videos and announcements from Gratitude for America, Media/News Company, .

John A. Roebling (1806 – 1869)A Prussian Engineer Immigrates and Builds an American Icon…Not all great American entrepre...
06/06/2024

John A. Roebling (1806 – 1869)

A Prussian Engineer Immigrates and Builds an American Icon…

Not all great American entrepreneurs were born here. John A. Roebling wasn’t. Roebling was born in 1806 in Mühlhausen, Prussia, a little town at almost the exact center of modern-day Germany.

Recognizing his genius, Roebling’s mother enrolled him in math and science classes early. In college, in addition to science and math he studied architecture, engineering, bridge construction, hydraulics and philosophy! He took an engineering job in 1825, working for the Prussian government designing and building military roads. It was here that Roebling would start thinking about suspension bridges, something he would do much thinking about for the rest of his life.

In 1831 Roebling, along with his brother and a number of other engineers left Prussia in order to seek their fortunes in the United States, which offered engineers (and many others) opportunities they could not find at home. Roebling and his brother, Carl, purchased 1,500 acres in Pennsylvania with the intention of creating a settlement for the German community, giving it the very German sounding name, Saxonburg.

The hoped for flood of immigrants never materialized however and setting engineering to the side, Roebling became a farmer. After six years of farming and the death of his brother, Roebling decided he really didn’t like farming. As such he hung up his overalls and looked back to engineering.

Once again he took a government job, this time working on railroad bridges and canals for the state of Pennsylvania. It was now that Roebling would return to suspension bridges. In looking at the increasing sophistication of and demands on suspension bridges, he started to look at alternatives to the h**p strand ropes that were common at the time and offered limited support and strength. He remembered something he had read previously about wire ropes and decided to start manufacturing wire ropes himself.

In 1844 Roebling, the fledgling entrepreneur, won the contract to replace the wooden canal aqueduct across the Allegheny River in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. He replaced the wooden structure with a seven span bridge supported by his tightly wrapped cable wires.

Over the next twenty years Roebling would build a series of bridges (some with double decks, carrying both vehicles and trains) and aqueducts of increasing size and complexity across the Northeast. This period would culminate with the Cincinnati-Covington Bridge, connecting Cincinnati, Ohio and Covington, Kentucky. Completed in 1867, it was the world’s longest suspension bridge.

Roebling’s increasing feats were in part made possible by his wire cables, and in 1848 he established the John A. Roebling’s Sons Company in Trenton, New Jersey which greatly increased his manufacturing capacity. Not only would Roebling’s company become the foremost builder of suspension bridges in the world during the 19th century, the plant would manufacture wire used in everything from elevators to cable cars to construction to electric power lines and eventually airplanes. Among the bridges Roebling’s plant manufactured wire for were the George Washington Bridge connecting New York and New Jersey and the Golden Gate Bridge across the San Francisco Bay.

But it was as an engineer that Roebling made his mark, and as an engineer it is how he is best remembered… for a bridge finished years after his death: The Brooklyn Bridge. Construction on Roebling’s design started in 1870, the year after Roebling died from complications resulting from an accident incurred while during surveys for the bridge. His son Washington Roebling would step in and complete the bridge, which would open on May 24, 1883 and would be the world’s longest suspension bridge for the next 20 years.

Roebling’s genius was both as an engineer and a businessman, and millions of people around the world enjoy the fruits of his genius every day, a century and a half after his death. He like many others saw that America was the land of opportunity and decided to make it his home. Anyone who has ever walked across the Brooklyn or Golden Gate bridges is grateful he did…

Further reading:
https://ellarslie.org/john-a-roebling-sons-company/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooklyn_Bridge
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_A._Roebling

I wanted to take a bit of a break from showcasing entrepreneurs to talk about something quite close to my heart.  Perspe...
23/05/2024

I wanted to take a bit of a break from showcasing entrepreneurs to talk about something quite close to my heart. Perspective…

America is an imperfect place, but it is still an extraordinary place. Most of human history is characterized by scarcity, war and tyranny. Today, few Americans experience any of that. Indeed, the poorest Americans today have lifestyles that are equal to those of the average European. What’s more, almost every American today – the vast majority of the people on the planet for that matter – enjoy lives that even kings of a century ago could never have imagined. From cell phones to jet flight to video games to MRI machines to air conditioners to the Internet and much more. And while Kings had plenty of food and shelter and personal transportation at the ready, most people of the day did not. Today almost every American has these and much more, and much of that is due to the efforts of American entrepreneurs such as those I chronicle here.

While understanding that America is imperfect, it’s simultaneously possible to recognize that it is the greatest nation that has yet been crafted on God’s green earth. The United States is the first nation in human history to be founded on the basic premise of the inalienable individual rights given to men by God, and that notion was the foundation upon which much of the modern world has been built. Over the course of almost 250 years the United States has been a powerful force in driving more freedom and more prosperity than any nation in history. The United States helped the British (who were the primary power driving the movement) and the French eliminate slavery throughout the world. The United States twice played a key role in saving the world from a cataclysm. The United States was the power behind the collapse of the Soviet Union.

While those events were important from a global history perspective, from the perspective of the everyday lives of people around the world a phalanx of American entrepreneurs have done even more. Cyrus McCormick revolutionized farming that had not changed substantially in over 5,000 years and freed up billions of people to do something besides farm. JD Rockefeller was the driving force that reduced the price of home heating fuel and later gasoline over 90% in the late 19th century, giving the common man access to energy he’d never had before. Henry Ford, while he didn’t invent the automobile, his assembly line innovation made transportation options available to the masses like it had never been before. There are of course other, more mundane things as well. Things like shipping containers and video games and frozen foods and air conditioning and electric washing machines… but at the end of the day the greatest thing about the American system of individual liberty, limited government and Capitalism is the opportunity it has given to every single American. This system, in the 1950’s, one of the most dynamic moments in human history, allowed the United States, with less than 5% of the world’s population, to generate over 25% of the world’s GDP, something that had never been done before by a population that small. And the beauty of the system is that it is fueled by crazy things that everyday Americans come up with: “a culture that tolerates and even extols the frivolous fertilizes the garden from which the consequential emerges.” Which means anyone and everyone has the opportunity to contribute and make the world a better place or generate vast wealth by building a better mousetrap or some combination of both.

So, as we watch people across the country disparage America, say it’s never been great and claim that she’s the source of all evil, remember that those accusations are being hurled by people who have benefited from and enjoy the fruits of the system that created the greatest advances in all of human history in a myriad of fields, and many, if not most of them, were developed by American entrepreneurs.

As such, my goal with this blog is to showcase those people who have given us so much, who have, as Adam Smith suggested, for their own reasons, made a better mousetrap, created a more efficient widget or somehow otherwise built or invented something that citizens would willingly exchange their hard-earned money for. It’s that mutually beneficial free exchange of goods and ideas and services that gave us the extraordinary world we live in today. When you look at the world from that perspective, gratitude becomes a lot easier to embrace. And when all is said and done, gratitude is maybe the single greatest driver of happiness in the world.

www.gratitudeforamerica.com

William L. McKnight  (1887 – 1978)William McKnight was born in White, South Dakota in 1887 in a sod home on his parents’...
02/05/2024

William L. McKnight (1887 – 1978)

William McKnight was born in White, South Dakota in 1887 in a sod home on his parents’ homestead.

At the age of 19 years old in 1907 he left 4 months into a 6 month college business program to join the company where he would work for the rest of his professional life: Minnesota, Mining and Manufacturing, better known as 3M. Founded as a mining company in 1902, the company would pivot to manufacturing sandpaper in 1905.

McKnight joined the struggling company as an Assistant Bookkeeper, earning $11.55 per week. He rapidly grasped the company’s financial peril and boldly made suggestions for cutting costs and making better products. Impressed, his boss made him Cost Accountant and two years later he was promoted to run the company’s Chicago office.

In 1914, seven years after joining the company he was made General Manager and in 1916, at the age of 29 he would become the company’s Vice President. Soon after due to the illness of the company’s president, Edgar Ober, McKnight would be running the company, and in 1929 he would officially take on the title of President, a position he would hold for the next 20 years.

McKnight would take the company from a struggling startup that made sandpaper that alienated customers unhappy the sand wouldn’t stay on the paper because the glue didn’t hold, to a company whose name would become synonymous with cutting edge innovation and one particularly attuned to customer needs and quality manufacturing.

The key to that transformation was McKnight’s focus on people and his confidence in their creativity. McKnight wanted 3M to become a bastion of new products. His most famous rule was that 30% of revenue should come from products developed within the last four years. Another rule included allowing employees to spend 15 percent of their time on personal projects without telling management. Understanding that mistakes could be made, McKnight established a program where the company would grant $50,000 for new ideas that have already been rejected if they could be successfully monetized. Some of the famous product that resulted from McKnight’s rules system included Post-it Notes, Thinsulate and advanced fiber optics.

In 1948 McKnight formalized his theory of management:

As our business grows, it becomes increasingly necessary to delegate responsibility and to encourage men and women to exercise their initiative. This requires considerable tolerance. Those men and women, to whom we delegate authority and responsibility, if they are good people, are going to want to do their jobs in their own way.

Mistakes will be made. But if a person is essentially right, the mistakes he or she makes are not as serious in the long run as the mistakes management will make if it undertakes to tell those in authority exactly how they must do their jobs.

Management that is destructively critical when mistakes are made kills initiative. And it’s essential that we have many people with initiative if we are to continue to grow.

In 1949 McKnight was made Chairman of the Board and he would finally retire in 1972. He joined company that was on the ropes in 1907 and left it as one of the world’s greatest manufacturing firms 65 years later. In addition to shepherding 3M through most of the 20th century, McKnight would also spend a great deal of time and money on charitable projects, largely through the McKnight Foundation, the multi billion dollar foundation he established in 1953.

Today, the company he saved and turned into a juggernaut manufactures over 60,000 products around the world and which holds over 100,000 patents. A great deal of that success is directly due to William McKnight’s appreciation for the power of ingenuity, his tolerance for risk, and perhaps most of all, his belief that if you give employees the freedom and incentive to be creative, entrepreneurial even, they can and will achieve greatness. There’s a lesson there for many of us, both in business and in life.

Charles Dow (1851 -1902) The Architect of Modern Financial JournalismCharles Dow was born in 1851 in Sterling, Connectic...
18/04/2024

Charles Dow (1851 -1902)

The Architect of Modern Financial Journalism

Charles Dow was born in 1851 in Sterling, Connecticut, a small town in the rolling hills, close to the Rhode Island line. Not a lot is known about his early years except that he was raised by his widowed mother and at 16 would leave home to work as an apprentice. At 21 he would take up the profession that would define the rest of his life, and indeed his legacy: Journalism.

His first real job was that of a reporter at the Daily Republican, in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1872. He would work there for three years before crossing into Rhode Island to take a job writing for the Providence Star. Two years later he would join the Providence Journal, which would be the catalyst that would eventually make Dow a household name across the country.

At the Journal Dow was known for writing compelling pieces that combined history and business as he sought to give readers information not only about a company specifically, but about the environment within which the company was operating. It was at this time he wrote a history of Newport, RI, which was then becoming the summer refuge of some of America’s richest families. Dow would become familiar with many of the town’s gentry and they came to respect his engaging writing and his commitment to keeping confidences as it related to sources of information shared with him.

It was about this time Dow’s editor sent him on a journey to Colorado, accompanying a group of investors, barons, geologists and lawmakers as they investigated the state’s nascent silver mining industry. Bankers were interested in generating attention to the opportunity so they could sell shares in the mines. Listening as the men drank and smoked and played cards and told stories, Dow began to understand much about business as well as the kind of information that the people on Wall Street sought out as they invested.

Dow wrote nine "Leadville Letters" based on his experiences in Colorado where he described the Rocky Mountains, the mining companies, and the boomtown's gambling, saloons, and dance halls. He also wrote of raw capitalism and the information that drove investments, In his last letter, Dow warned, "Mining securities are not the thing for widows and orphans or country clergymen, or unworldly people of any kind to own. But for a businessman, who must take risks in order to make money; who will buy nothing without careful, thorough investigation; and who will not risk more than he is able to lose, there is no other investment in the market today as tempting as mining stock."

Bitten by the business writing bug, in 1880 Dow would move to New York and write for the Kiernan Wall Street Financial News Bureau. Two years later he would partner with Edward Jones and Charles Bergstresser to form Dow Jones and Co. The company would start publishing the Customers' Afternoon Letter, a two page newsletter focused on the day’s financial and business news. Soon it had a daily circulation over 1,000 and became a much sought after source of information from investors.

Five years later, in 1889 the company transformed the two page letter into a full fledged newspaper, the Wall Street Journal. At that point the company had over 50 employees and desks in or telegraph connections to major business centers such as Boston, Chicago, Washington, Philadelphia and London.

From the beginning Dow was adamant that the Wall Street Journal would be a straight news newspaper. It would not allow its coverage to be swayed by advertisers, nor would it allow companies to dictate how they were covered in his paper. In a word, in a market where financial journalism was often seen – rightly so – as a shill for companies or investors, Dow wanted the Wall Street Journal to be known for its integrity. (And for most of it's history it has been.)

In 1896, building on the success of his 11 stock (mostly railroads) index he had created as part of the Customer’s Afternoon Letter in 1884, Dow created the Dow Jones Industrial Average, (DJIA) which included 12 of the biggest and best capitalized industrial companies in America at the time: American Cotton Oil, American Sugar, American To***co, Chicago Gas, Distilling & Cattle Feeding, General Electric, Laclede Gas, National Lead, North American, Tennessee Coal and Iron, U.S. Leather, and U.S. Rubber. Each day he would add up the closing prices of all twelve stocks and divide the total by 12. This blue-chip average – which would expand to 30 companies in 1928 – would go on to become the most watched stock market metric in the world over the next century. When historians talk about the great stock market crash that ended the Roaring Twenties, they typically refer to the DJIA, which lost almost a quarter of its value on October 28th and 29th of 1929 and over the next three years would lose almost 90% of its value.

Dow was instrumental not only in giving investors information about business and a measure by which to gauge market health, but he also gave them a theory of investing – Dow Theory – that has been the foundation for shrewd investors for more than a century. Dow’s theory basically said that the stock market follows trends, which can be analyzed to discern where stocks are headed. Today that type of model is called technical analysis and is used by investors around the world every day.

Dow would manage the company until 1902 when it was sold Boston correspondent Clarence Barron. He would write his last piece for the Journal in April of that year. On December 4th 1902 Charles Dow would suffer a heart attack and die at the age of 51. The paper he built would go on to become America’s most widely read – and most respected - newspaper well into the 21st century and the Index that bears his name one of the most watched financial metrics in the world. Not bad for a self-made man with little education who left home at 16 and started out knowing almost nothing about stocks and business and investing.

https://gratitudeforamerica.com/

Levi Strauss (1829 – 1902)A Man Whose Name Has Become Iconic Around the WorldLevi Strauss was born as Loeb Strauss in Bu...
10/04/2024

Levi Strauss (1829 – 1902)
A Man Whose Name Has Become Iconic Around the World

Levi Strauss was born as Loeb Strauss in Buttenheim, Germany in 1829. In 1847 after the death of his father, he, his two sisters and his mother immigrated to the United States and landed in New York City. There he joined his two brothers in their wholesale dry goods business, called “J. Strauss Brother & Co.”

After learning the ropes and sensing an opportunity in California with the Gold Rush of 1849, Loeb – by now legally Levi, headed to California in February 1853, a month after becoming an American citizen.

His destination was San Francisco, where he established Levi Strauss & Co. He was a wholesaler who brought in dry goods of all sorts from his brothers in the east and sold them to the small shops who supplied the tens of thousands of gold prospectors who were seeking their fortunes in the mines and streams across America’s then newest state. He would sell everything from clothing to umbrellas to fabric. One fabric in particular was duck cloth, or cotton denim, a heavy duty material that was popular with farmers and miners. It was that fabric that would eventually change the world of clothing, although it would not happen for another twenty years!

Strauss became a very successful wholesaler, with his customers trying to keep up with the burgeoning numbers of people moving to California, not only for gold, but for the myriad opportunities from farming to construction to railroads to the lumber industry. But 19 years after leaving for California, his life would change forever.

In 1872 one of his regular customers, Jacob Davis, a tailor from a Reno, Nevada contacted him with a proposition. He had been using metal rivets at the on the corners of the pants he had been making for his miner clients. His clients loved them because in the rough and tumble world of 19th century California they were durable. He wanted to patent the idea, but he didn’t have enough money to pay for the patent application and he wanted to know if Strauss would like to become his business partner and share the cost ($68). Always a man with an eye for an opportunity, Strauss jumped at the chance and they applied for the patent.

On May 20, 1873 US Patent No. 139,121 for "Improvements in fastening pocket openings" was issued to Jacob Davis and Levi Strauss & Co. That day is considered the “birthday” of blue jeans, however at the time they were called “waist overalls”. Davis had already been doing a brisk business, but with their patent issued and their idea protected, Strauss put the business into overdrive, making Davis the head of manufacturing. For the first decade or so jeans were sewn by seamstresses in their homes until in the early 1880’s when the pair set up their first manufacturing facility, located near Market Street in San Francisco. The facility not only produced the company’s signature 501 blue jeans - then known as "XX", but it also manufactured overalls, shirts and other clothing as well.

And the rest, as they say, is history. Strauss would play an important role in his company for most of the rest of his life, although he would bring in numerous nephews to help him as the company grew. He crafted a culture of community within his company, insisting that employees call him Levi rather than Mr. Strauss. That culture survived after Strauss died in 1902, as demonstrated by the fact that, despite suffering great damage to their facilities in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and subsequent fires the company continued to pay employee salaries and extended credit to other, less fortunate merchants until they could get back on their feet.

When he died in 1902 Levi Strauss had an estate of $30 million, or approximately $900 million today. Over his lifetime Strauss donated vast sums to different charities and community organizations from Congregation Emanu-El, San Francisco’s first Jewish synagogue to orphan programs, to hospitals to the University of California, Berkeley.

Levi Strauss was a businessman, a family man and a man of the community. Unlike some, he very much kept the three intertwined in his life. Perhaps that's why today the company he started still sells millions of pairs of basically the same iconic product he first manufactured over 150 years ago.

Henry Flagler (1830 -1913)A Giant of Industry… No, of Two IndustriesHenry Flagler was born in Hopewell, New York on Janu...
02/03/2024

Henry Flagler (1830 -1913)

A Giant of Industry… No, of Two Industries

Henry Flagler was born in Hopewell, New York on January 2nd, 1830. He went to school until the 9th grade when he quit in 1844 to work for his uncle in his store. Flagler was paid $5 a month and given room and board. He prospered there until in his early twenties when his uncle started a grain business and made a small fortune servicing the whiskey distilling business. He later put that small fortune ($950,000 in today’s money) into a salt mining business. The business collapsed after the Civil War and Flagler lost not only his investment, but an equal amount he had borrowed from his father-in-law.

Retuning to the grain business, Flagler worked to repay his family. It was there that Flagler would meet J.D. Rockefeller, who worked for a competitor. In 1867 Rockefeller would approach Flagler for investment in an oil refining company he wanted to start. Flagler’s stepbrother would invest $100,000 and Flagler would be a partner and control his brother’s interest. The market for Kerosine, which was the primary product of oil refining at the time, was booming and Rockefeller, Andrews and Flagler – which would evolved into Standard Oil – quickly became a major player. It was Flagler who was behind the innovation of rebates – where Standard Oil would get lower rates and rebates on their competitors’ shipping – that allowed the company to undercut competitors and play the railroads against one another, thereby quickly growing into the 800 lb gorilla on the block. While this tactic, which was initially done in secret, was a catalyst for Standard Oil’s growth, when discovered became a lightning rod for criticism of the company.

By the mid 1870’s Standard Oil gained control of virtually all of the refining capacity in Ohio by harnessing Cleveland’s transportation strength, being ruthlessly cost competitive and buying out its competitors. Standard Oil leveraged that Ohio stronghold to grow throughout the country and by the end of the decade it controlled 90% of America’s refining capacity. It was during this time the state of Pennsylvania sued Rockefeller and Flagler for charges of monopolizing the oil trade. This would be the first of a cavalcade of legal assaults on the company which would eventually lead to it being broken up into 34 smaller companies in 1911 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it was an illegal monopoly.

Flagler stepped back from active participation in Standard Oil in 1882 when he decided to turn his attention south. Having visited Florida for the first time in 1878 when his wife fell ill, he was immediately captivated by the lightly populated state. His first project was the 540 room Ponce De Leon hotel in St. Augustine, which took two years to build and opened in 1888. The hotel was one of firsts, being both the first of its kind to be built with the then new technique of poured concrete and also one of the first hotels in America to be wired for electricity, powered by Flagler's friend, Thomas Edison.

But Flagler kept looking south and built a railroad along Florida’s east coast all the way down to Palm Beach, where he would build the Royal Poinciana hotel in 1894 and the Palm Beach Inn hotel in 1896. The latter, renamed The Breakers still stands, although this version is the third of that name, the original and a replacement both burning down, the former in 1903 and the latter in 1925.

Still not done, Flagler extended his railroad to what we know as Miami, but at the time was a lightly populated unincorporated area. Flagler’s railroad reached Biscayne Bay in 1896 and he promptly opened the Royal Palm Hotel a year later. A decade later Flagler finally decided to run his railroad to Florida’s then most populous city, Key West, 128 miles away. After seven years the Florida Overseas Railroad was completed in 1912, but Flagler would not build a hotel there. He didn't have time. He died the next year the result of a fall. The Overseas Railroad would last for only 20 years however, as sections of it would be destroyed in 1935 by the Labor Day Hurricane. A highway would be built in its place.

Few men make a household name of themselves in one industry. Henry Flagler did it in two. In oil he was unmatched: When John D. Rockefeller was asked if the Standard Oil company was the result of his thinking, he answered, “No, sir. I wish I had the brains to think of it. It was Henry M. Flagler." In 1896 when Miami was to be incorporated the citizens wanted to name the city after him but he demurred.

Henry Flagler was a giant of his industry in his time. After transforming the face of American energy, he went on to become one of the pioneers behind what he called the "American Riviera.". Over quarter century he built railroads, hotels, hospitals and donated to communities over much of Florida and today his genius can be seen in the map of Florida. From the general path of US Route 1 to Flagler County, to Flagler College to Flagler Beach to Flagler Hospital to the Flagler Museum, and countless monuments to him across the state, Henry Flagler was a giant in the development of one of America's most popular states. For a man born in the middle of winter in the virtual tundra in northern New York, one has to imagine that he’s happy that he is resting in peace in the paradise he loved so much, St. Augustine, Florida.

Charles Martin Hall (1863 – 1914) The Man Who Made Aluminum Bats Possible... For Better or Worse!Charles Martin Hall was...
22/02/2024

Charles Martin Hall (1863 – 1914)

The Man Who Made Aluminum Bats Possible... For Better or Worse!

Charles Martin Hall was born in 1863 in Thompson, Ohio, about 40 miles east of Cleveland. He was something of a wonderkid in that by the age of 6 he was reading chemistry books written for adults. At 8 years old he entered school and at 16 he attended his father’s alma mater, Oberlin College.

It was at Oberlin that Hall sat in on a lecture about aluminum and the speaker said: "if anyone should invent a process by which aluminum could be made on a commercial scale, not only would he be a benefactor to the world, but would also be able to lay up for himself a great fortune". Hall took that challenge to heart and it infused much of his research over the next decade.

Aluminum is the most common metal formed in the Earth’s crust at 8.23% of its mass, and behind only Oxygen 46.1% and Silicon 28.2% in overall abundance. The problem however is that aluminum isn’t found on its own but rather as part of a compound from which it must be extracted. Extraction was difficult and aluminum was expensive, costing approximately $8 a pound in the 1880s, which made it cost prohibitive when compared to steel which was priced at close to two cents per pound. Indeed, aluminum was so expensive at that time that it was considered a precious metal.

Hall set about doing experiments trying to figure out how to extract the aluminum more efficiently. Although he experimented all though school he was never successful. Later, in 1884 he set up his own lab with a homemade furnace. Two years later he struck gold – aluminum actually – when he developed what is called the Hall–Héroult process which involved sending an electric current through a bath of alumina dissolved in cryolite. The name comes from the fact that Hall and a Frenchman named Paul Héroult discovered the process almost simultaneously, each doing so independently. Hall applied for a US patent and it was granted in 1889, Number: 600,444.

After failing to raise capital at home Hall went to Pittsburg and metallurgist Alfred E. Hunt. Together they formed a company that would eventually be called Alcoa (Aluminum Company of America) and opened the first large scale aluminum production plant. Hall’s process would revolutionize aluminum production around the world and would by the time he died in 1914 the cost of aluminum had dropped 97% from 1887’s $8 per pound to $.18 per pound. Its strength and light weight made aluminum an ideal metal for use in a wide variety of applications, from food packaging to aluminum foil to cars and much later airplanes. Indeed, aluminum became a viable alternative to many products that were previously manufactured using glass and steel and at the same time its light weight, strength and versatility created opportunities for flexible packaging and shapes that previously didn’t exist. And that includes aluminum baseball bats!

Hall would eventually move to Florida but he would spend much of his life refining and improving his process, eventually earning 22 patents. Charles Martin Hall died in 1914 having never married or having children. He left the bulk of his sizable fortune to charity. In one of the strange quirks of fate, the other man after whom the Hall–Héroult process is named, Paul Héroult, was born the same year as Hall… and died the same year Hall did!

Address


Website

http://www.gratitudeforamerica.com/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Gratitude for America posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Shortcuts

  • Address
  • Alerts
  • Claim ownership or report listing
  • Want your business to be the top-listed Media Company?

Share