---
title: "What primary source supports the Hall-Héroult era aluminium price figures ($16/lb 1884 → $2/lb 1889 → $0.5/lb 1894)?"
type: "question"
status: "answered"
date_raised: "2026-07-12T00:00:00.000Z"
tags: ["economics","commodity-markets","aluminium","sourcing","price-history"]
answered_log: ["2026-07-22: Answered by [[claim-wikipedia-aluminium-price-sequence-is-a-citation-splice]], [[claim-usgs-lacks-aluminium-price-data-1884-1894]], [[claim-richards-1896-preface-gives-different-aluminium-price-figures]], and [[claim-skrabec-lockwood-disagree-on-1884-aluminium-silver-price]]. What settled it: an exhaustive chase down the citation chain found no single primary source supports the full sequence as commonly quoted — Wikipedia splices two unrelated secondary authors (Skrabec for 1884, Hanners for 1889/1894); the USGS's own compiled price series has no data at all for 1884, 1889, or 1894; and the one genuine primary reached (Richards' own 1896 preface) gives a different, if directionally consistent, pair of numbers ($12/lb ~1885, $0.50/lb late 1895). The question as raised — 'is there a Tier 1-2 source for this exact sequence' — is answered in the negative, definitively, not left open for want of trying. The narrower residual thread (whether Richards' own internal Statistics section matches Hanners' paraphrase) is a distinct, more specific question, routed separately to [[question-richards-1896-statistics-section-price-table]]."]
---


[[claim-aluminium-price-fell-monotonically-after-hall-heroult]] rests on Wikipedia's "History of aluminium" article for a specific, load-bearing quantitative sequence: roughly $16/lb in 1884, falling to $2/lb in 1889 and $0.5/lb in 1894. Wikipedia is Tier 4 — fine for locating the claim, not for resting a quantitative claim as verified, especially since this figure is doing real work: it's the empirical counterexample to a vault model prediction ([[claim-asteroid-pgm-price-holds-then-collapses]]) and the anchor for [[claim-cheaper-extraction-disruptions-fall-monotonically-not-hold-then-collapse]].

**What's needed:** a Tier 1–2 source carrying the same or comparable price series — candidates: contemporary trade-press price quotations (e.g. *Engineering and Mining Journal* archives), USGS historical aluminium price/production statistics, the Aluminum Association's historical data, Alcoa company records, or an economic-history paper on the Hall-Héroult price collapse (there is a well-known literature on this as a textbook case of a technology-driven price collapse).

**Candidate next moves:**
- Check USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries historical series for aluminium (they often carry price data back to the 1880s).
- Search for the specific $16 → $2 → $0.50 figures in an economic-history source to confirm Wikipedia didn't garble a decimal or a currency-year adjustment.
- If a primary confirms the monotonic shape (no plateau), promote [[claim-aluminium-price-fell-monotonically-after-hall-heroult]] out of `[unverified-quant]` and consider upgrading its `source_tier`.


## Progress log

- 2026-07-22: Answered by [[claim-wikipedia-aluminium-price-sequence-is-a-citation-splice]], [[claim-usgs-lacks-aluminium-price-data-1884-1894]], [[claim-richards-1896-preface-gives-different-aluminium-price-figures]], and [[claim-skrabec-lockwood-disagree-on-1884-aluminium-silver-price]]. What settled it: an exhaustive chase down the citation chain found no single primary source supports the full sequence as commonly quoted — Wikipedia splices two unrelated secondary authors (Skrabec for 1884, Hanners for 1889/1894); the USGS's own compiled price series has no data at all for 1884, 1889, or 1894; and the one genuine primary reached (Richards' own 1896 preface) gives a different, if directionally consistent, pair of numbers ($12/lb ~1885, $0.50/lb late 1895). The question as raised — 'is there a Tier 1-2 source for this exact sequence' — is answered in the negative, definitively, not left open for want of trying. The narrower residual thread (whether Richards' own internal Statistics section matches Hanners' paraphrase) is a distinct, more specific question, routed separately to [[question-richards-1896-statistics-section-price-table]].