Part of the success of any start-up business is being in the right place at the right time to ride a wave of innovation or change. Niagara County has witnessed the truth of this maxim on many occasions in its 200-year history. Accordingly, the descendants of old Niagara County families should be asking themselves what happened to their potential fortunes in 1887 when Charles Martin Hall was looking for backing for his new invention. You see, Hall had just been issued a patent for a process that would go on to become the cornerstone of many great fortunes.

Hall had been working in Lockport and had tried to interest people in his idea for reducing aluminum ore into its components. Hall invented this process working in his father’s woodshed, with his sister as a helper, using homemade equipment. Technically, Hall invented “the electrolytic process of recovering light metal aluminum from its refined ores.” With Hall’s system, the price of aluminum was eventually reduced from $8 a pound in 1886 to 15 cents a pound in 1944. Using Hall’s patent, aluminum became big business.

Here in Lockport, Hall met with Alfred and Eugene Cowles who agreed to open a business using the Hall patent. The Cowles Electric Smelting and Aluminum Company secured a six-month use of the patent and began producing aluminum alloy at their plant on Jackson Street at the foot of Rattlesnake Hill. After that time, Hall continued to look for local backers to expand his industry. When the Cowles brothers declined further expansion and without sufficient local interest, Hall accepted an offer for financing from Andrew Mellon and his Pittsburgh Reducing Company. With a factory originally in Niagara Falls, the business later bloomed in Pittsburgh to become the Aluminum Company of America or Alcoa, as we know it today. Lockportians passed up the opportunity, but the aluminum industry still made men of vision like Hall and Mellon very wealthy.

Douglas Farley, Director
Erie Canal Discover Center
24 Church St.
Lockport NY 14094
716.439.0431
CanalDiscovery@aol.com
www.NiagaraHistory.org