Charles Martin Hall

Charles Martin Hall 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, along with Alfred E. Hunt; Hunt's partner at the Pittsburgh Testing Laboratory, George Hubbard Clapp; Hunt's 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. Together they raised $20,000 to launch the Pittsburgh Reduction Company, which was later renamed Aluminum Company of America and then shortened to Alcoa.

6 December 1863

Born on the same birth day (6 December): Arthur Henry Adams • Daniel Lisulo • Darrell Jackson • David Lovering • December 6 • Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac • Natascha Badmann • Paul McVeigh • Sylvia Townsend Warner • Tautau Moga • Torri Higginson

Born in the same month (December 1863): Annie Jump Cannon • Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria • Arthur Dehon Little • Charles Edward Ringling • Charles Lincoln Edwards • Charles Pathé • Edvard Munch • Felix Calonder • George Santayana • Gussie Davis • Louis Lincoln Emmerson • Paul Painlevé • Pietro Mascagni • Richard Warren Sears • Wallace Bryant (archer)