HallHéroult process | Physics Today | AIP Publishing
On this day in 1886 Charles Martin Hall of Oberlin, Ohio, used an electrochemical process to make aluminum from aluminum oxide. Around the same time, Paul Héroult of ThuryHarcourt, France, independently discovered the same process. (In the photos, Hall is cleanshaven; Héroult is bearded.) Because of its high melting point, aluminum oxide is impractical to smelt by heat alone. Before the ...