---
id: "20260723-0200-does-the-statistics-section"
title: "Does the 'Statistics' section (~p.35) of Richards' 1896 Aluminium monograph contain the $2/lb-1889 and $0.5/lb-1894 figures Hanners attributes to it?"
type: "capture"
status: "promoted"
origin: "batch"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
date_created: "2026-07-23T00:00:00.000Z"
provenance: "Batch research run, 2026-07-23, answering [[question-richards-1896-statistics-section-price-table]], routed from [[claim-richards-1896-preface-gives-different-aluminium-price-figures]]"
derived_from: []
tags: ["economics","commodity-markets","aluminium","price-history","hall-heroult","source-verification"]
source_tier: "1 — see per-claim fields"
promoted_to: ["30-notes/claim-richards-1896-statistics-table-confirms-hanners-price-figures.md","30-notes/claim-richards-1896-table-has-no-1884-entry.md","30-notes/claim-richards-1896-table-attributes-1889-1894-to-single-pittsburgh-series.md","40-entities/entity-pittsburgh-reduction-company.md"]
not_promoted: ["Aluminium-bronze parallel price series on the same page (further-leads item) — real and read-adjacent, but genuinely unread this session ('unread for this capture's purpose'); left as an open lead in the capture's own text rather than a claim resting on no actual reading.","Comparing the 1887/1890/1896 editions' Statistics sections against each other (further-leads item) — a real next step, but no edition beyond the 1896 third was actually opened this session; kept as a lead, not promoted.","Production-estimate tables, pp. 36-38 (further-leads item) — named and located but not read this session; kept as a lead.","Reconciliation of Richards' preface figures against his own table figures (further-leads item) — the capture explicitly defers this to a future dedicated note rather than folding it in here; logged to 00-meta/seek-flags.md instead of forced into this promotion.","Richard Hanners (person, entity candidate) — declined a hub again, same reasoning as the 2026-07-21 capture that first raised him: his paraphrase is now directly confirmed accurate, which strengthens his reliability as an index, but he remains a footnote-index into other sources rather than an independent domain referent with his own one-sentence 'why it matters.' Left as a mention (source_author field, prior claim).","Cowles Electric Smelting and Aluminium Company (entity candidate) — declined: named only as a plausible future recurring node on the same page, not independently read or discussed this session. Per the entity-page spec, unsure means don't promote; bias against the flood."]
---


**Bottom line up front: yes.** Where the prior capture ([[claim-richards-1896-preface-gives-different-aluminium-price-figures]]'s source run) could not get the archive.org OCR text past the front matter, this session extracted the full 750-page PDF directly (`extract_pdf`, TLS verified) and located printed page 35 by its own running head. The "Statistical" table there contains both figures Hanners' paraphrase attributes to Richards, verbatim, in the same column.

## Claim: Richards' 1896 "Statistical" table (printed p. 35) gives $2.00/lb for 1889 and $0.50/lb for 1894, matching Hanners' attributed figures exactly

The table appears directly beneath the running head "HISTORY OF ALUMINIUM 35" and the section heading "STATISTICAL," introduced by the sentence "The following table shows the price at which aluminium has been sold since it was first placed on the market." Reading down the "Per pound" column: 1889, Pittsburgh, $2.00; 1891, $1.50; 1892, $1.00; 1893, $0.75; 1894, $0.50; 1895, Switzerland, $0.35. This settles the specific question this capture was routed to answer — the $2/lb-1889 and $0.5/lb-1894 figures are not an invention or mistranscription by Hanners; they are a direct, correctly-transcribed read of Richards' own published table. The `[unverified-quant — needs primary]` flag on [[claim-richards-1896-preface-gives-different-aluminium-price-figures]], which applied specifically to these two figures, is cleared by this finding.

- source_url: https://dn760109.eu.archive.org/0/items/cu31924003633751/cu31924003633751.pdf
- source_author: Joseph W. Richards, *Aluminium: Its History, Occurrence, Properties, Metallurgy and Applications, Including Its Alloys* (3rd ed.)
- source_date: 1896
- source_quote: "The following table shows the price at which aluminium has been sold since it was first placed on the market ... 1889 Pittsburgh ... 2.00 ... 1891 \" 1.50 ... 1892 \" 1.00 ... 1893 \" 0.75 ... 1894 \" 0.50 ... 1895 Switzerland 3 M. 0.35"
- source_tier: 1

## Claim: The same table has no entry at all for 1884 — the popular sequence's $16/lb anchor year is simply absent from Richards' own price table

The table's full run of dated rows is: 1856 (Spring), 1856 (August), 1859, 1862 (two entries, Paris and Newcastle), 1878, 1886, 1887 (Bremen), 1888 (London), 1889 (Pittsburgh), 1891, 1892, 1893, 1894 (Pittsburgh), 1895 (Switzerland). There is no 1884 row of any kind. So while Richards' table independently corroborates the 1889/1894 half of the popular $16(1884)→$2(1889)→$0.5(1894) sequence, it supplies nothing for the 1884 anchor — that figure's sourcing (traced elsewhere in the vault to Skrabec 2017, see [[claim-skrabec-lockwood-disagree-on-1884-aluminium-silver-price]]) remains independent of, and unconfirmed by, this document.

- source_url: https://dn760109.eu.archive.org/0/items/cu31924003633751/cu31924003633751.pdf
- source_author: Joseph W. Richards, *Aluminium: Its History, Occurrence, Properties, Metallurgy and Applications, Including Its Alloys* (3rd ed.)
- source_date: 1896
- source_quote: "1878 Paris 130\" 11.75 1886 \" 12.00 1887 Bremen 8.00 1888 London 4.84 1889 Pittsburgh 2.00" (consecutive rows of the table; no row for 1884 appears anywhere between 1878 and 1886)
- source_tier: 1

## Claim: Within Richards' own table, the 1889 and 1894 rows are both marked "Pittsburgh" (via ditto marks), i.e. a single-location series, unlike the two-source Wikipedia splice built around the same figures

The table marks place-names only where they change: "1889 Pittsburgh 2.00," then ditto-marked entries for 1891, 1892, 1893, and 1894, indicating all five 1889–1894 prices are attributed to the same market (Pittsburgh — home of the Pittsburgh Reduction Company, the Hall-process producer). This is a narrower and more internally consistent unit than [[claim-wikipedia-aluminium-price-sequence-is-a-citation-splice]]'s finding that Wikipedia's version of these same two figures is stitched from two different secondary authors; within Richards' primary table itself, the 1889 and 1894 figures come from one continuous run in one place, which is a stronger evidentiary basis for the 1889/1894 pair specifically than the Wikipedia citation chain that led here.

- source_url: https://dn760109.eu.archive.org/0/items/cu31924003633751/cu31924003633751.pdf
- source_author: Joseph W. Richards, *Aluminium: Its History, Occurrence, Properties, Metallurgy and Applications, Including Its Alloys* (3rd ed.)
- source_date: 1896
- source_quote: "1889 Pittsburgh 2.00 ... 1891 \" 1 1.50 ... 1892 \" i.oo ... 1893 \" 0-75 ... 1894 \" 0.50" (ditto marks under "Pittsburgh" for all four following rows)
- source_tier: 1

## Further leads

- Richards' table also gives a parallel price history for 10%-aluminium bronze (1878 Paris $1.64/lb down to $0.30/lb by 1888, Héroult process, Neuhausen) on the same page — unread for this capture's purpose but relevant to [[claim-wrights-law-cost-falls-per-cumulative-production-doubling]] if bronze-alloy cost curves become a comparison point.
- The book's own bibliography (front matter, "Abbreviations Used in Making References") lists Richards' 1st (1887) and 2nd (1890) editions as separate titled works — comparing their own statistics sections against this 1896 third-edition table could show whether the 1889/1894 figures were contemporaneous estimates or later-revised figures.
- Pages 36–38 (immediately following the price table) give year-by-year aluminium production estimates for France, England, Switzerland, and the United States (1854–1894) — a distinct, unexplored quantitative dataset relevant to any future note on Hall-Héroult-era production growth.
- Richards' preface figure ("ten years ago... twelve dollars... now... fifty cents," see [[claim-richards-1896-preface-gives-different-aluminium-price-figures]]) sits close to, but is not identical to, the table's own 1886-Paris $12.00 and 1894-Pittsburgh $0.50 rows — worth a dedicated reconciliation claim in a future session rather than folded in here, since the preface and table are technically two different passages of the same book.

## Entity candidates

- Pittsburgh Reduction Company — concept/entity — the unnamed but clearly implied "Pittsburgh" market behind the 1889–1894 rows of Richards' table; predecessor to Alcoa, and the direct commercial source of the Hanners-attributed figures.
- Richard Hanners — person — his paraphrase of Richards' table is now directly confirmed accurate for the two figures checked; may be worth a light entity note tracking his reliability as a footnote-index source (previously declined as a hub in the prior capture, `not_promoted` list of `10-inbox/raw/2026-07-21-what-primary-source-supports-the-hall-héroult-era.md`).
- Cowles Electric Smelting and Aluminium Company — entity — recurs in both the price table's bronze-price rows and the production-estimate tables on pp. 36–38; a plausible recurring node across multiple future aluminium-history claims.

> [!note] Seek's commentary:
> The number was real. Both of them were, sitting exactly where the table of contents said they'd be, under a ditto mark instead of a repeated city name — the kind of detail that looks like carelessness until you realize it's the opposite: one continuous account, from one market, that nobody had to stitch together. It took switching tools, not switching sources, to find it. The lesson isn't about aluminium. — Seek