Histoire technique de la production d’aluminium: Les apports français au développement international d’une industrie ed. by Paul Morel

Abstract

944 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE importance of consumer demand (and the cultural factors which shaped this demand) in determining the nature and extent of technological change. Christopher E. Guthrie Dr. Guthrie is an associate professor of history at Tarleton State University and is currently working on a book that examines the historiography of the period between 1815 and 1851 in Europe. Histoire technique de la production d’aluminium: Les apports français au développement international d’une industrie. Edited by Paul Morel. Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, 1992. Pp. 352; illustra­ tions, tables, glossary, notes, bibliography, index. F 220.00 (paper). Aluminum, although the most common of metals in nature, and now one of the most common in everyday use, has a short history, having been isolated (in minute quantities) less than 200 years ago. It proved difficult to produce chemically in any quantity, although it was so produced after 1850, first in France, then in England and the United States. Its relatively high price led its proponents to search almost wildly for profitable uses, for it exercised a powerful fascina­ tion on metallurgists and industrial chemists. Modern production dates from 1886 when, almost simultaneously, C. M. Hall in the United States and P. Hérault in France invented an electrolytic method of production (simple electrolysis having proved impractical); the two methods differed only slightly, and botfi were used in both countries until World War I. This method, essentially what is used now, involves the electrolysis of purified alumina (the oxide, in France always derived from bauxite) in molten cryolite (a naturally occurring aluminum-fluoride compound, mainly found in Greenland), using carbon anodes and a cast-iron or steel box (pot, vat, cuve) lined with carbon as both the cathode and the cell. The use of this method led to the formation of Alcoa in the United States and to numerous works in France, of which the most notable was and is that founded by Pechiney, now, after many amalgamations, known by his name. This firm has sponsored an institute for the history of aluminum, which has produced the work under review, each chapter by a different hand. After a quick review of 19th-century developments (usefully sum­ marized in the conclusion), successive chapters deal in detail with the gradual development of ever-larger assemblies of cuves, everimproved anodes and arrangements of them, ever-higher electric currents (the aim being to raise the current to well over 100,000 amperes while keeping the “density”—amperes per centimeter squared—as low as possible), improved anodes of different types, improved arrange­ ments of cuves, the treatment of the metal, and the history of electrical sources (initially all hydroelectric). TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 945 Of greatest interest to readers of Technology and Culture will be chapter 2, on the protection of the environment in and outside the factories, and chapter 6, on the history and organization of research facilities. The production of aluminum is the production of powerful pollutants in great quantity, including carbon monoxide and gases rich with fluorine. The first factories were built in the mountains to utilize hydroelectricity on site, and although the gaseous emissions devastated the countryside, it was, as so often in the 19th century, thought cheaper to pay compensation to farmers for the loss of cattle by fluoride poisoning than to control emissions. Gradually, it was seen to be cheaper to control emissions by improved recovery of the fluorine to save cryolite and to protect the workmen, initially exposed to cruel levels of gases and high temperatures, and ultimately this gave improved production. Research facilities as such were initially minimal: every works had its laboratory, at first only for quality control. Only slowly did research expand from mostly factory-floor improvements in production to the setting up of genuine, separate, research facilities. This latter move­ ment, mainly (as with Alcoa) a development of the period between the world wars, was hindered by the economic crisis of the 1930s and, in France, by the devastation of French economic life during World War II, caused by German occupation. After the war, the French economy experienced a resurgence, partly stimulated by surveys of American and German firms...