George Hubbard Clapp, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

    

George Hubbard Clapp

American businessman

Date of Birth: 14-Dec-1858

Place of Birth: Allegheny, Pennsylvania, United States

Date of Death: 31-Mar-1949

Profession: zoologist, malacologist

Nationality: United States

Zodiac Sign: Sagittarius


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About George Hubbard Clapp

  • George Hubbard Clapp (1858–1949) was an American pioneer in the aluminum industry and also a numismatist. He was born on December 14 in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, now a part of Pittsburgh, the son of Delia Dennig Hubbard and DeWitt Clinton Clapp, an iron company executive.
  • He graduated from the Western University of Pennsylvania, today's University of Pittsburgh, in 1877.
  • He married Anne Love in 1882 and the couple had two children. Clapp took an engineering position at Park Brothers' Black Diamond Steel Works.
  • There, along with Captain Alfred E.
  • Hunt, he established the Pittsburgh Testing Laboratory's chemistry department.
  • Hunt formed a company in 1888 to exploit the Charles Martin Hall patents for making aluminum by electrolysis.
  • Clapp was treasurer and secretary of the fledgling company.
  • He resigned as treasurer in 1892 and was replaced by Andrew W.
  • Mellon.
  • The company became later known as the Aluminium Company of America.
  • While Hall is generally credited with the invention the aluminum process, Clapp raised the initial venture capital to make the process commercially viable.
  • The Mellon interests supplied the company's working capital. As Clapp's wealth grew, he pursued his avocational interests in conchology and numismatics.
  • He had begun collecting coins as a boy in the 1870s by sifting through the coins of a toll bridge across the Allegheny River.
  • He later became a founder of the Western Pennsylvania Numismatic Society.
  • His grandfather encouraged him to start collecting shells.
  • Over the years he assembled more than 100,000 mollusk shells, which he later donated to the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh.
  • In the 1930s he donated his coin collections to both the American Numismatic Society and the Carnegie. Beginning in 1907 until his death, Clapp was president of Pitt's Board of Trustees.
  • He was a driving force in moving the school from its North Side location to the Oakland district.
  • He also was a trustee of the Carnegie Institute of Technology, today's Carnegie Mellon University and a member of the American Chemical Society. He died at age 90 on March 31, 1949 at his home in Sewickley, Pennsylvania.
  • Clapp Hall, an academic building on the Pitt campus, is named in his honor.

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