Sainte-Claire Deville, Charles

Charles Sainte-Claire Deville, 1814 -1876. French geologist who explored the Antilles, the Azores, and the Canary Islands and studied the allotropic forms of sulfur... 

The first pure aluminum was prepared by the great French chemist Henri Sainte-Claire Deville, who was bom on the Island of St. Thomas in the Antilles on March 11, 1818. Both Henri and his elder brother Charles were educated at the Institution Sainte-Barbe in Paris, where Charles studied geology under Elie de Beaumont at die School of Mines, while Henri took the medical course and studied chemistry under Thenard. Both brothers were crowned by the Institute, and both were in the same section. Throughout their lives they had the deepest affection for one... 

The next scene of the aluminum drama is laid in the United States. Henri Sainte-Claire Deville s process had made the metal a commercial product, but it was still expensive. Charles Martin Hall, a student at Oberlin College, inspired by the accounts which Professor F. F. Jewett had given of his studies under Wohler, decided that his supreme aim in life would be to devise a cheap method for making aluminum. In an improvised laboratory in the woodshed, and with homemade batteries, he struggled with this problem. On February 23,1886, this boy of twenty-one years rushed into his professors office and held out to him a handful of aluminum buttons. Since these buttons led to a highly successful electrolytic process for manufacturing aluminum, it is small wonder that the Aluminum Company of America now treasures them and refers to them affectionately as the crown jewels A beautiful statue of the youthful Charles M. Hall, cast in aluminum, may now he seen at Oberlin College (11, 55). 

M. Heroult also made many important contributions to the electrometallurgy of iron and steel. He made frequent trips to the United States, and when the Perkin Medal was awarded to Charles M. Hall in 1911, M Heroult crossed the ocean in order to be present at the ceremony and congratulate him. By this gracious act, he proved himself to be a worthy successor of his great, generous countryman, Henri Sainte-Claire Deville (II, 52). Dr. Heroult and C. M. Hall both died in 1914. 

Aluminium, which Sainte-Claire Deville liked to compare to silver, was mainly used for silverware and jewellery. Charles Cristofle (1805-1863), the celebrated Parisian silversmith, produced cast artwork made of aluminium alloyed with 2% copper. In 1858, the son of Napoleon III was offered a rattle made of aluminium. 

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