From Monopoly to Competition The Transformations of Alcoa, 1888–1986

A history of the aluminium giant Alcoa, which became one of America??'s most successful monopolies.

When Charles Martin Hall patented the process for refining the metal in 1886, it was far from self-evident that the new technology would be a business success. Problems involving the technology had to be solved. Capital and a labour force were needed. The most pressing entrepreneurial dilemma was the need to develop markets for what was then a novelty product. George David Smith examines how Alcoa met these problems, with special attention to innovation, from Alcoa's beginnings through its development into one of the most successful monopolies in American history. By World War II, no other American corporation had developed its industry's markets more dramatically and then dominated them more completely. The book then analyzes the undoing of Alcoa's monopoly by war and antitrust, and examines how the firm adapted to evolving forms of oliogopolistic and global competition.

List of charts; List of tables; List of photographs; Editor's preface; Author's preface; Note on the corporate name; 1. Invention and entrepreneurship: the electrolytic process and the establishment of The Pittsburgh Reduction Company; 2. Alcoa in context: the rise of the complex corporation; 3. Building a big business: markets, strategy, and structure through the First World War; 4. Alcoa comes of age: organization, innovation, and labor from the Roaring 20s through the Great Depression; 5. Undoing the monopoly: the Second World War and Learned Hand; 6. Alcoa's 'splendid retreat': the rise of the aluminium oligopoly, 1947–1957; 7. Magee, Close, and Harper: covering the world in aluminium, 1958–1970; 8. Responses to a changing world; Appendices; Notes; Index.

This is a history of the aluminium giant Alcoa, from its beginnings through its development into one of the most successful monopolies in American history, to its postwar adaptation to evolving forms of oligopolistic and global competition.