Entrance and Spillway House, Ontario Power Company, Niagara Palls, Ontario.

The uses to which electrical power is put in the city of Niagara Falls are most interesting. In 1886 Charles M. Hall, at the age of twenty-two and fresh from Oberlin College, devised a process for the inexpensive production of aluminum. Prior to Mr. Hall's discovery aluminum though the most abundant of all metals was united to other elements in such a way that a separation of the metal from its compounds was very difficult and correspondingly expensive.

Mr. Hall's process for obtaining aluminum from its ore is a reduction or deoxidation process by electrolysis. Into a carbon lined vat or "reducing pot" extend carbon cylinders. The vat is partly filled with powdered cryolite, a beautiful white mineral mined in southern Greenland. When the electric current passes, the resistance

Power House No. 1 and Power House No. 2 and "Step up" Transformer House in middle, Niagara Falls Power Company (American side).