Economic concepts of value are derived from scarcity. Gold is scarce so it is precious.
Seawater contains vast quantities of dissolved gold, perhaps as much as $10 trillion (US) worth, though in dilute concentrations. Recent evidence suggests that much of the earths continental gold deposits have biological origins. Certain bacteria are believed to have been involved in the precipitation of gold out of dilute hydrothermal solutions. A possible avenue for commercially viable gold recovery from seawater might involve such a bacterium, or a specifically engineered microbe.
Aluminum was once very scarce and precious.
This presentation explores the relationship between money, time, value and wealth. What is transactional, what is valuable, where does wealth repose? This presentation delves into some of the most important philosophical underpinnings of business, economics, finance, time, and psychology.
This presentation explores the relationship between money, time, value and wealth. What is transactional, what is valuable, where does wealth repose? This presentation delves into some of the most important philosophical underpinnings of business, economics, finance, time, and psychology.
Nikola Tesla was a Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, and futurist best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current electricity supply system. These slides discuss about the childhood, education, hardships, achievements and inventions of Nikola Tesla.
The slide is inspired by the outstanding work of Tesla and a book : Sean Patrick, Nikola Tesla: Imagination and the Man That Invented the 20th Century(March 18, 2013)
This is a fun presentation that gives an overview of the history of metering including the "founding fathers" of the metering industry, breakthroughs, technical advancements, patents and even a look into what the future holds for metering.
This presentation was given at Minnesota Electric Meter School in September 2019. From the ancient Egyptians to the 1600s and more modern day discoveries, this presentation discusses the early discoveries of electricity and developments of the power grid.
A comprehensive summary of electrical discovery through time - from the earliest experiments by the Greeks and Romans to the Fathers of Our Industry - Volta, Ohm, Tesla, Edison, etc., and on to our modern metering industry.
This presentation will go through the history of the electric meter, dating back to 1802 and noting significant visionaries who helped play a part in the evolution of the meter as we see it today.
Nikola Tesla was a Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, and futurist best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current electricity supply system. These slides discuss about the childhood, education, hardships, achievements and inventions of Nikola Tesla.
The slide is inspired by the outstanding work of Tesla and a book : Sean Patrick, Nikola Tesla: Imagination and the Man That Invented the 20th Century(March 18, 2013)
This is a fun presentation that gives an overview of the history of metering including the "founding fathers" of the metering industry, breakthroughs, technical advancements, patents and even a look into what the future holds for metering.
This presentation was given at Minnesota Electric Meter School in September 2019. From the ancient Egyptians to the 1600s and more modern day discoveries, this presentation discusses the early discoveries of electricity and developments of the power grid.
A comprehensive summary of electrical discovery through time - from the earliest experiments by the Greeks and Romans to the Fathers of Our Industry - Volta, Ohm, Tesla, Edison, etc., and on to our modern metering industry.
This presentation will go through the history of the electric meter, dating back to 1802 and noting significant visionaries who helped play a part in the evolution of the meter as we see it today.
This presentation gives a thorough overview of the history of electric metering from the first known observations of electricity from the ancient Egyptians to the development of the world's first power grid. Also discussed is the War of the Currents, early electric metering, and what the future may hold for the industry.
Criteria for a great marketing book: ideas from psychology, behavioral economics, marketing, advertising, and business about how to influence behavior and buying patterns at the edges of bounded rationality
Leveraging Human experience into Customer experience
Creative thinking is a skill that can be developed and improved. Creativity is not just for artists and musicians.
Commercial enterprises need to create new products and services that have value for customers. Innovation and invention require novel ideas. Businesses need to solve problems and overcome obstacles. All solutions to problems start as ideas. These are all creative endeavors.
The Purpose of Economics: lift nine tenths of mankindMBA ASAP
In a Misery of this Sort, admitting some few Lenities, and those too but a few, nine Parts in ten of the whole Race of Mankind drudge through Life.
Edmund Burke, A Vindication of Natural Society, 1756
The new economics have transformed the lives of everyone on the planet!
The notion that the nine parts of mankind could free itself from its age-old fate took hold in the Victorian era in London
It is still spreading.
Negotiating | A Practical and Principled ApproachMBA ASAP
Negotiation is a continuing problem solving process. It’s getting people with both common and conflicting interest to come together to arrange or adjust their future relationship by making a joint decision.
Strategic Management of Healthcare OrganizationsMBA ASAP
Health Care costs have been growing at an unsustainable rate. Reaching an estimated 17.3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2009, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), representing the largest one-year increase in history when the nation itself was in the midst of the “great recession.” Predictions are for health care costs to be 19.3 percent of GDP in 2019 (four times the 5.1 percent of GDP in 1960). Despite the high cost of health care, gaps and inequities persisted, leading to health care reform. The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), or commonly Affordable Care Act (ACA) is attempting to change the US health care system from a volume-based to a value-based model.
Statistics is the study of the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation and presentation of data. It deals with all aspects of data, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments.
Business statistics is the science of good decision making in the face of uncertainty and is used in many disciplines such as financial analysis, econometrics, auditing, production and operations including six sigma, and marketing research
More and more data is collected as a by-product of doing business and by government agencies.
Managerial Economics | Overview and SummaryMBA ASAP
Managerial economics deals with the application of the economic concepts, theories, tools and methodologies to solve practical problems in a business. It helps the manager in decision making and acts as a link between practice and theory.
Managing Strategic Momentum | Making Strategy WorkMBA ASAP
Strategy is usually viewed as an annual exercise at best, an event that creates a ‘product,' and not a process to be used to actually run the business
Disconnect between Strategy and Tactics
The only legitimate work in an organization is work that contributes to the accomplishment of the strategic plan.
It takes the orchestration of management as well as leadership to perpetuate these capabilities into the future.
Strategy matters even more to entrepreneurs than to established businesses. Yet lean methods for innovation also have a lot of value. The two are not in conflict; rather their reconciliation in the lean strategy process holds out hope for entrepreneurs in organizations of all sizes to become agile, effective innovators.
Any resource-constrained organization needs a strategy that defines boundaries.
Clarifying what is in and what is out of bounds ensures that experimentation is not rampant and is encouraged within those parameters.
It helps firms identify the long-term attractiveness of possible business models or market spaces before testing their feasibility.
By combining strategy and experimentation in such a fashion, all firms can greatly increase the odds of achieving lasting success
is the periodic process of developing a set of steps for an organization to accomplish its mission and vision using strategic thinking.
Putting the pieces of the puzzle together.
provides a sequential, step-by-step process for creating a strategy,
involves periodic group strategic thinking (brainstorming) sessions,
requires data/information, but incorporates consensus and judgment,
establishes organizational focus,
facilitates consistent decision making,
reaches consensus on what is required to fit the organization with the external environment, and
results in a documented strategic plan
Business Models for Writers | Content Creation, Dissemination, and MonetizationMBA ASAP
Content Production Workflow
Or
Enter the Matrix
I would like to share with you ways I have used to build and expand your brand and writer’s platform by creating a personal media ecosystem. Content is King. We all work and aspire to create great content with readers and audiences and fans in mind. We have repositories of content and ideas that can be leveraged and repurposed in different formats across multiple channels to increase awareness and capture new fans and customers. 1,000 true fans can support a sustainable artistic livelihood.
Potential readers have a wide variety of choices in the way they consume and enjoy information and content that begins as writing. You can monetize your writing by getting creative about repurposing your content across a variety of social media and sales channels. A digital first strategy focuses on taking advantage of platforms and partners that are very inexpensive and in many cases costless. Become aware of business model choices that create multiple revenue streams.
I will show you my content production workflow that stems from my writing and forms a matrix of properties that are then promoted and sold in a variety of ways. Leverage computer and web tools for content repurposing and do it all yourself. These ancillary revenue streams and promotional channels can help you support a sustainable creative living.
Strategic Thinking for Competitive AdvantageMBA ASAP
Leaders, similar to great athletes, must simultaneously play the game and observe it as a whole.
Keep perspective and see the big picture – not get lost in the action.
“All enterprises or projects, big or small, begin in the mind's eye; they begin with imagination and with the belief that what is merely an image can one day be made real.”
Vision and a sense of the future
Strategic thinking requires a mindset – a way of thinking or intellectual process that
accepts change,
analyzes the causes and outcomes of change,
attempts to direct an organization's future to capitalize on the changes.
From the Greek στρατηγία stratēgia, "art of troop leader; generalship"
Strategy is a high-level plan to achieve one or more goals under conditions of uncertainty and limited resources.
A comprehensive way to try to pursue political ends, including the threat or actual use of force, in a dialectic of wills in a military conflict, in which both adversaries interact.
Strategy is important because the resources available to achieve these goals are usually limited. Strategy generally involves setting goals, determining actions to achieve the goals, and mobilizing resources to execute the actions. A strategy describes how the ends (goals) will be achieved by the means (resources). Strategy can be intended or can emerge as a pattern of activity as the organization adapts to its environment or competes. It involves activities such as strategic planning and strategic thinking.
A device such as a word or a logo can only be considered a trademark or a service mark if it is distinctive. A distinctive word or logo is one that is capable of distinguishing the goods or services upon which it is used from the goods or services of others. A non-distinctive device is one that merely describes or names a characteristic or quality of the goods or services.
There is a spectrum of trademarks based on their strength. Devices that are fanciful, arbitrary, or suggestive are considered distinctive enough to function as trademarks.
A work or invention that is the result of creativity, such as a manuscript or a design, to which one has rights and for which one may apply for a patent, copyright, trademark, etc.
A generic trademark, also known as a genericized trademark or proprietary eponym, is a trademark or brand name that, due to its popularity or significance, has become the generic name for, or synonymous with, a general class of product or service, usually against the intentions of the trademark's holder. The process of a product's name becoming genericized is known as genericide.
Money is a transactional vehicle.
Money is any item or verifiable record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts.
The main functions of money are distinguished as:
a medium of exchange
a store of value
Any item or verifiable record that fulfills these functions can be considered money.
Economic activity relies on group agreement relative to the value of assets and their prices. When prices rise, people tend to get excited and buy more, bidding prices higher. This is called speculation or irrational exuberance. Values can only defy gravity for so long and when folks begin to realize assets may be over-priced, panic selling brings it all crashing down. Pop.
The crash which usually follows an economic bubble can destroy a large amount of wealth and cause continuing economic malaise.
Here are some of the more infamous bubble bursting events and “adjustments” that have occurred since the industrial revolution and our thinking about economics began.
This ties the earlier threads together and goes on a deeper dive into some of the challenges and issues facing managers and leaders. Now its your turn...
Abhay Bhutada Leads Poonawalla Fincorp To Record Low NPA And Unprecedented Gr...Vighnesh Shashtri
Under the leadership of Abhay Bhutada, Poonawalla Fincorp has achieved record-low Non-Performing Assets (NPA) and witnessed unprecedented growth. Bhutada's strategic vision and effective management have significantly enhanced the company's financial health, showcasing a robust performance in the financial sector. This achievement underscores the company's resilience and ability to thrive in a competitive market, setting a new benchmark for operational excellence in the industry.
how to swap pi coins to foreign currency withdrawable.DOT TECH
As of my last update, Pi is still in the testing phase and is not tradable on any exchanges.
However, Pi Network has announced plans to launch its Testnet and Mainnet in the future, which may include listing Pi on exchanges.
The current method for selling pi coins involves exchanging them with a pi vendor who purchases pi coins for investment reasons.
If you want to sell your pi coins, reach out to a pi vendor and sell them to anyone looking to sell pi coins from any country around the globe.
Below is the contact information for my personal pi vendor.
Telegram: @Pi_vendor_247
1. Elemental Economics - Introduction to mining.pdfNeal Brewster
After this first you should: Understand the nature of mining; have an awareness of the industry’s boundaries, corporate structure and size; appreciation the complex motivations and objectives of the industries’ various participants; know how mineral reserves are defined and estimated, and how they evolve over time.
BONKMILLON Unleashes Its Bonkers Potential on Solana.pdfcoingabbar
Introducing BONKMILLON - The Most Bonkers Meme Coin Yet
Let's be real for a second – the world of meme coins can feel like a bit of a circus at times. Every other day, there's a new token promising to take you "to the moon" or offering some groundbreaking utility that'll change the game forever. But how many of them actually deliver on that hype?
5 Tips for Creating Standard Financial ReportsEasyReports
Well-crafted financial reports serve as vital tools for decision-making and transparency within an organization. By following the undermentioned tips, you can create standardized financial reports that effectively communicate your company's financial health and performance to stakeholders.
how to sell pi coins in South Korea profitably.DOT TECH
Yes. You can sell your pi network coins in South Korea or any other country, by finding a verified pi merchant
What is a verified pi merchant?
Since pi network is not launched yet on any exchange, the only way you can sell pi coins is by selling to a verified pi merchant, and this is because pi network is not launched yet on any exchange and no pre-sale or ico offerings Is done on pi.
Since there is no pre-sale, the only way exchanges can get pi is by buying from miners. So a pi merchant facilitates these transactions by acting as a bridge for both transactions.
How can i find a pi vendor/merchant?
Well for those who haven't traded with a pi merchant or who don't already have one. I will leave the telegram id of my personal pi merchant who i trade pi with.
Tele gram: @Pi_vendor_247
#pi #sell #nigeria #pinetwork #picoins #sellpi #Nigerian #tradepi #pinetworkcoins #sellmypi
how to sell pi coins effectively (from 50 - 100k pi)DOT TECH
Anywhere in the world, including Africa, America, and Europe, you can sell Pi Network Coins online and receive cash through online payment options.
Pi has not yet been launched on any exchange because we are currently using the confined Mainnet. The planned launch date for Pi is June 28, 2026.
Reselling to investors who want to hold until the mainnet launch in 2026 is currently the sole way to sell.
Consequently, right now. All you need to do is select the right pi network provider.
Who is a pi merchant?
An individual who buys coins from miners on the pi network and resells them to investors hoping to hang onto them until the mainnet is launched is known as a pi merchant.
debuts.
I'll provide you the Telegram username
@Pi_vendor_247
The European Unemployment Puzzle: implications from population agingGRAPE
We study the link between the evolving age structure of the working population and unemployment. We build a large new Keynesian OLG model with a realistic age structure, labor market frictions, sticky prices, and aggregate shocks. Once calibrated to the European economy, we quantify the extent to which demographic changes over the last three decades have contributed to the decline of the unemployment rate. Our findings yield important implications for the future evolution of unemployment given the anticipated further aging of the working population in Europe. We also quantify the implications for optimal monetary policy: lowering inflation volatility becomes less costly in terms of GDP and unemployment volatility, which hints that optimal monetary policy may be more hawkish in an aging society. Finally, our results also propose a partial reversal of the European-US unemployment puzzle due to the fact that the share of young workers is expected to remain robust in the US.
This presentation poster infographic delves into the multifaceted impacts of globalization through the lens of Nike, a prominent global brand. It explores how globalization has reshaped Nike's supply chain, marketing strategies, and cultural influence worldwide, examining both the benefits and challenges associated with its global expansion.
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Cotton in Nike Apparel
Nike Shops Worldwide
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6. Going off Gold Standard
• 1971
• Nixon Shock
• Floating Currencies
• Exchange Rates
• Inflation
• As a consequence of the
costs of the Vietnam War,
US needed to print more
money than gold reserves
could accommodate.
7. Intrinsic Value in Precious Metals
• Utility?
• Gold: incorruptible;
doesn’t rust or oxidize
• Philosophical meaning
of value: permanence
like the stars.
• Rare
8. Alchemy
• Get Rich quick
• Turn base metals into
Gold
• Fore runner to
chemistry
9. Famous people who were
practicing alchemists or influenced
by alchemical texts
• Isaac Newton
– Hinge point
• Plato
• Shakespeare
• Leonardo Da Vinci
• Rumi
• John Milton
10. Isaac Newton
• Physics
– Universal Gravitation
– Laws of motion
• Calculus
• Optics
– Prism: separation of
white light into rainbow
spectrum
– Reflecting Telescope
11. Isaac Newton
• As Master of the Mint in
1717 in the "Law of
Queen Anne" Newton
moved the Pound
Sterling de facto from
the silver standard to
the gold standard by
setting the bimetallic
relationship between
gold coins and the silver
penny in favor of gold.
13. Alchemists to Chemists
• Western alchemy is
recognized as a
protoscience that
contributed to the
development of
modern chemistry and
medicine
• Francis Bacon
• Linus Pauling
14. Rare = Precious = Valuable
• Aluminum
• Discovered in 1800s
• So rare that the
pyramid on to of the
Washington Monument
is covered in Aluminum
leaf.
• December 1884
• Laus Deo
15. Pyramidion on top of Washington
Monument
• Made of Aluminum
• Inscriptions
• Orientation to Sun
• Meaning and
Significance
• Obelisk
17. Real Alchemy
• Invention of Process to
extract Aluminum using
electricity
• Charles Martin Hall
• Lab experiment
• Scale up
• Need lots of electricity
• Enabling technology
18. Edison and DC
• Direct Current was the
first distributed electricity
• New York City had the
first electric lights and
power distribution
• JP Morgan financed
Edison’s electric
operations
• Consolidated Edison
became General Electric
22. Tesla and Twain
• Twain spent a lot of
time visiting Tesla’s lab
in New York City.
• These two men came to
be friends—essentially,
as mutual fanboys.
• A bromance.
23. Invention of AC
• Nickolai Tesla
• Harness the power of
Niagra Falls
• Generators
• Electric Motors
• Distrbution
– Transformers
24. Creative Destruction
• Competing Systems:
– Direct Current
– Alternating Current
• War of the Currents
• Edison electrocuted
dogs to “prove” the
danger of AC
25. George Westinghouse
• American entrepreneur
and engineer who
invented the railway air
brake and was a
pioneer of the electrical
industry.
• Westinghouse/Edison
Rivalry
26. Electrification of the World
Nikola Tesla and George
Westinghouse built the
first hydro-electric power
plant in Niagara Falls and
started the electrification
of the world. Adam's
Power Station (Power
House No. 3), the only
remains of the old Niagara
Falls Power Plant.
27. Harnessing Nature’s Power
The first use of Niagara Falls Power Company
electricity was by the Pittsburgh Reduction
Company (later to be renamed Aluminum
Company of America), which used an
electrolytic process invented by Charles M.
Hall. The company was founded in Pittsburgh
in 1886 but transferred operations to Niagara
Falls during this period because of the
prospect of cheap and reliable electrical
power.
28. Charles Martin Hall
(December 6, 1863 –
December 27, 1914)
American inventor, music
enthusiast, 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.
29. U.S. patent #400,666
Hall's method of
processing the metal ore
was to pass an electric
current through a non-
metallic conductor
(molten sodium fluoride
compound was used) to
separate the very
conductive aluminum. In
1889, Charles Martin Hull
was awarded U.S. patent
#400,666 for his process.
31. ALCOA
In 1888, together with
financier Alfred E. Hunt,
Charles Martin Hall founded
the Pittsburgh Reduction
Company now know as the
Aluminum Company of
America (ALCOA). By 1914,
Charles Martin Hall had
brought the cost of
aluminum down to 18 cents
a pound and it was no longer
considered a precious metal.
33. Gold from Sea Water
Seawater contains vast quantities of dissolved gold,
perhaps as much as $10 trillion (US) worth, though
in dilute concentrations. Recent evidence suggests
that much of the earths continental gold deposits
have biological origins. Certain bacteria are believed
to have been involved in the precipitation of gold
out of dilute hydrothermal solutions. A possible
avenue for commercially viable gold recovery from
seawater might involve such a bacterium, or a
specifically engineered microbe.
34. Could we return to Gold Standard?
• Exchange Rates
• Credit Rating of
Treasury Debt Erodes
• Hyper inflation
• Nostalgia for underlying
hard concrete value to
money
35. Bitcoin
• A move in the opposite
direction toward
transcendent
unregulated immaterial
notion of value
representation.
• Blockchain
36. Concepts of Value and Money
and Disruptive Technology
Alchemy and Economics
Editor's Notes
Gold certificates were used as paper currency in the United States from 1882 to 1933. These certificates were freely convertible into gold coins.
Alchemy is an influential philosophical tradition whose early practitioners’ claims to profound powers were known from antiquity. The defining objectives of alchemy are varied; these include the creation of the fabled philosopher's stone possessing powers including the capability of turning base metals into the noble metals gold or silver, as well as an elixir of life conferring youth and immortality. Western alchemy is recognized as a protoscience that contributed to the development of modern chemistry and medicine. Alchemists developed a framework of theory, terminology, experimental process and basic laboratory techniques that is still recognizable today. But alchemy differs from modern science in the inclusion of Hermetic principles and practices related to mythology, religion, and spirituality.
Sir Isaac Newton PRS MP (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1727 [NS: 4 January 1643 – 31 March 1727])[1] was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and theologian, who has been "considered by many to be the greatest and most influential scientist who ever lived."[7] His monograph Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, published in 1687, lays the foundations for most of classical mechanics. In this work, Newton described universal gravitation and the three laws of motion, which dominated the scientific view of the physical universe for the next three centuries. Newton showed that the motions of objects on Earth and of celestial bodies are governed by the same set of natural laws, by demonstrating the consistency between Kepler's laws of planetary motion and his theory of gravitation, thus removing the last doubts about heliocentrism and advancing the Scientific Revolution.
The Principia is generally considered to be one of the most important scientific books ever written, due, independently, to the specific physical laws the work successfully described, and for the style of the work, which assisted in setting standards for scientific publication down to the present time. Newton built the first practical reflecting telescope[8] and developed a theory of colour based on the observation that a prism decomposes white light into the many colours that form the visible spectrum. He also formulated an empirical law of cooling and studied the speed of sound. In mathematics, Newton shares the credit with Gottfried Leibniz for the development of differential and integral calculus. He also demonstrated the generalised binomial theorem, developed Newton's method for approximating the roots of a function, and contributed to the study of power series. Newton's work on infinite series was inspired by Simon Stevin's decimals.[9] Newton, although an unorthodox Christian, was deeply religious, and wrote more on Biblical hermeneutics and occult studies than on science and mathematics. Newton secretly rejected Trinitarianism, and feared being accused of refusing holy orders.[10]
Newton moved to London to take up the post of warden of the Royal Mint in 1696, a position that he had obtained through the patronage of Charles Montagu, 1st Earl of Halifax, then Chancellor of the Exchequer. He took charge of England's great recoining, somewhat treading on the toes of Lord Lucas, Governor of the Tower (and securing the job of deputy comptroller of the temporary Chester branch for Edmond Halley). Newton became perhaps the best-known Master of the Mint upon the death of Thomas Neale in 1699, a position Newton held for the last 30 years of his life.[54][55] These appointments were intended as sinecures, but Newton took them seriously, retiring from his Cambridge duties in 1701, and exercising his power to reform the currency and punish clippers and counterfeiters. As Master of the Mint in 1717 in the "Law of Queen Anne" Newton moved the Pound Sterling de facto from the silver standard to the gold standard by setting the bimetallic relationship between gold coins and the silver penny in favour of gold. This caused silver sterling coin to be melted and shipped out of Britain. Newton was made President of the Royal Society in 1703 and an associate of the French Académie des Sciences. In his position at the Royal Society, Newton made an enemy of John Flamsteed, the Astronomer Royal, by prematurely publishing Flamsteed's Historia Coelestis Britannica, which Newton had used in his studies.[56]
Personal coat of arms of Sir Isaac Newton[57]
In April 1705, Queen Anne knighted Newton during a royal visit to Trinity College, Cambridge. The knighthood is likely to have been motivated by political considerations connected with the Parliamentary election in May 1705, rather than any recognition of Newton's scientific work or services as Master of the Mint.[58] Newton was the second scientist to be knighted, after Sir Francis Bacon.
The discovery of aluminum is a perfect example of a once-scarce resource that became suddenly cheap and plentiful, thanks to advances in technology. This kind of disruptive innovation is becoming more commonplace, which means the world will soon be enjoying abundance on a scale never seen before in human history, predict Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler in their new book Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think.
Gaius Plinius Cecilius Secundus, known as Pliny the Elder, was born in Italy in the year AD 23. He was a naval and army commander in the early Roman Empire, later an author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, best known for his Naturalis Historia, a thirty-seven volume encyclopedia describing, well, everything there was to describe. His opus includes a book on cosmology, another on farming, a third on magic. It took him four volumes to cover world geography, nine for flora and fauna, and another nine for medicine. In one of his later volumes, Earth, book XXXV, Pliny tells the story of a goldsmith who brought an unusual dinner plate to the court of Emperor Tiberius.
The plate was a stunner, made from a new metal, very light, shiny, almost as bright as silver. The goldsmith claimed he’d extracted it from plain clay, using a secret technique, the formula known only to himself and the gods. Tiberius, though, was a little concerned. The emperor was one of Rome’s great generals, a warmonger who conquered most of what is now Europe and amassed a fortune of gold and silver along the way. He was also a financial expert who knew the value of his treasure would seriously decline if people suddenly had access to a shiny new metal rarer than gold. “Therefore,” recounts Pliny, “instead of giving the goldsmith the regard expected, he ordered him to be beheaded.”
This shiny new metal was aluminum, and that beheading marked its loss to the world for nearly two millennia. It next reappeared during the early 1800s but was still rare enough to be considered the most valuable metal in the world. Napoléon III himself threw a banquet for the king of Siam where the honored guests were given aluminum utensils, while the others had to make do with gold.
Aluminum’s rarity comes down to chemistry. Technically, behind oxygen and silicon, it’s the third most abundant element in the Earth’s crust, making up 8.3 percent of the weight of the world. Today it’s cheap, ubiquitous, and used with a throwaway mind-set, but—as Napoléon’s banquet demonstrates—this wasn’t always the case. Because of aluminum’s high affinity for oxygen, it never appears in nature as a pure metal. Instead it’s found tightly bound as oxides and silicates in a claylike material called bauxite.
While bauxite is 52 percent aluminum, separating out the pure metal ore was a complex and difficult task. But between 1825 and 1845, Hans Christian Oersted and Frederick Wohler discovered that heating anhydrous aluminum chloride with potassium amalgam and then distilling away the mercury left a residue of pure aluminum. In 1854 Henri Sainte-Claire Deville created the first commercial process for extraction, driving down the price by 90 percent. Yet the metal was still costly and in short supply.
It was the creation of a new breakthrough technology known as electrolysis, discovered independently and almost simultaneously in 1886 by American chemist Charles Martin Hall and Frenchman Paul Héroult, that changed everything. The Hall-Héroult process, as it is now known, uses electricity to liberate aluminum from bauxite. Suddenly everyone on the planet had access to ridiculous amounts of cheap, light, pliable metal.
Save the beheading, there’s nothing too unusual in this story. History’s littered with tales of once rare resources made plentiful by innovation. The reason is pretty straightforward: scarcity is often contextual. Imagine a giant orange tree packed with fruit. If I pluck all the oranges from the lower branches, I am effectively out of accessible fruit. From my limited perspective, oranges are now scarce. But once someone invents a piece of technology called a ladder, I’ve suddenly got new reach. Problem solved. Technology is a resource-liberating mechanism. It can make the once scarce the now abundant.
"The evolution of electric power from the discovery of Faraday in 1831 to the initial great installation of the Tesla polyphase system in 1896 is undoubtedly the most tremendous event in all engineering history"
-Dr. Charles F. Scott, Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering at Yale University and former President of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers
Charles began his education at home, and was taught to read at an early age by his mother. At the age of six, he was using his father's 1840's college chemistry book as a reader[1]. At age 8, he entered public school, and progressed rapidly. His family moved to Oberlin, Ohio in 1873. He spent three years at Oberlin High School, and a year at Oberlin Academy in preparation for college. During this time he demonstrated his aptitude for chemistry and invention, carrrying out experiments in the kitchen and the woodshed attached to his house. In 1880, at the age of 16, he enrolled in Oberlin College. Oberlin College, the first co-educational college in the United States, was founded in Oberlin in 1833 to be "the gathering point in a community devoted to high thinking and plain living"[2]. Hall was encouraged in his scientific experiments, with ideas and materials from Professor Frank Fanning Jewett (1844–1926). Jewett received his undergraduate and some graduate training from Yale University. From 1873 - 1875, he studied chemistry at the University of Göttingen in Germany. Here he met Friedrich Wöhler, and obtained a sample of aluminum metal. Upon returning to the United States, he spent a year assisting Wolcott Gibbs at Harvard University, then spent a further four years as Professor of Chemistry at the Imperial University of Tokyo in Japan. In 1880, he became the professor of chemistry and minerology at Oberlin College. The Jewett home is preserved in Oberlin as the Oberlin Heritage Center. The center features an exhibit called Aluminum: The Oberlin Connection, which includes a re-creation of Hall's 1886 woodshed experiment. The Hall House is also preserved in Oberlin, although the woodshed was demolished long ago. In his second term, Hall attended, with considerable interest, Professor Jewett's lecture on aluminum; it was here that Jewett displayed the sample of aluminum he had obtained from Wöhler, and remarked, "if anyone should invent a process by which aluminum could be made on a commercial scale, not only would he be a benefactor to the world, but would also be able to lay up for himself a great fortune[2]". Hall was determined that he would be the first.
[edit] Discovery
His initial experiments in finding an aluminum reduction process were in 1881; he attempted, unsuccessfully, to produce aluminum from clay by smelting with carbon in contact with charcoal and potassium chlorate. He next attempted to improve the electrolytic methods previously established by investigating cheaper methods to produce aluminum chloride, again unsuccessfully. In his senior year, he attempted to electrolyse aluminum fluoride in water solution, but was unable to produce aluminum at the cathode.
In 1884, after setting up a homemade coal-fired furnace and bellows in a shed behind the family home, he again tried to find a catalyst that would allow him to reduce aluminum with carbon at high temperatures: "I tried mixtures of alumina and carbon with barium salts, with cryolite, and with carbonate of sodium, hoping to get a double reaction by which the final result would be aluminum. I remember buying some metallic sodium and trying to reduce cryolite, but obtained very poor results. I made some aluminum sulphide but found it very unpromising as a source of aluminum then as it has been ever since."[2].
He had to fabricate most of his apparatus and prepare his chemicals, and was assisted by his older sister Julia Brainerd Hall (see Craig 1986, CIM Bulletin). The basic invention involves passing an electric current through a bath of alumina dissolved in cryolite, which results in a puddle of aluminum forming in the bottom of the retort. On July 9, 1886, Hall filed for his first patent. This process was also discovered at nearly the same time by the Frenchman Paul Héroult, and it has come to be known as the Hall-Héroult process. (Asimov 1982, p. 933)
After failing to find financial backing at home, Hall went to Pittsburgh where he made contact with the noted metallurgist Alfred E. Hunt. They formed the Reduction Company of Pittsburgh which opened the first large-scale aluminum production plants. The Reduction Company later became the Aluminum Company of America, then Alcoa. Hall was a major stockholder, and became wealthy.
The Hall-Héroult process eventually resulted in reducing the price of aluminum by a factor of 200, making it affordable for many practical uses. By 1900, annual production reached about 8 thousand tons. Today, more aluminum is produced than all other non-ferrous metals combined.
Hall is considered the originator of the American spelling of aluminum. According to Oberlin College, he misspelled it on a handbill publicizing his aluminum refinement process. The process was so revolutionary, and brought the metal to such prominence, that Americans have spelled aluminum with one "i" since. In the United Kingdom and other countries using British spelling, only aluminium is used. The spelling in virtually all other languages is analogous to the -ium ending.
Hall continued his research and development for the rest of his life and was granted 22 US patents, most on aluminum production. He served on the Oberlin College Board of Trustees. He was vice-president of the Alcoa until his death in 1914 in Daytona, Florida. He died unmarried and childless and was buried in Westwood Cemetery in Oberlin. Hall left the vast majority of his fortune to charity. His generosity contributed to the establishment of the Harvard-Yenching Institute, a leading foundation dedicated to advancing higher education in Asia in the humanities and social sciences.[3]