Background
Charles Ernest Acker was born on March 19, 1868 in Bourbon, Indiana, United States; of Dutch descent. His parents were William James and Mercia (Grant) Acker.
Charles Ernest Acker was born on March 19, 1868 in Bourbon, Indiana, United States; of Dutch descent. His parents were William James and Mercia (Grant) Acker.
Acker was educated at Wabash College and Cornell University, graduating in 1888 with a degree of Bachelor of Philosophy.
In 1888-1893 Acker practiced as an electrical engineer in Chicago. Here he began his career as an experimenter and inventor in electro-chemistry, perfecting in 1896 his process for producing caustic soda and chlorine from the electrolysis of molten salt. This invention was the basis of the Acker Process Company of Niagara Falls, of which Acker was vice-president and general manager for a number of years. His inventions included processes for producing alkali metals, metallic alloys, and caustic alkalis, in 1899; three patents on caustic alkali and halogen gas processes, in 1900-1901; patents on methods for producing stannic and stannous chlorids, other chlorine compounds of tin, with apparatus, in 1906; carbon-tetrachlorid process, in 1908; processes for nitrogen and other compounds, and for nitrides, in 1909; for producing oxygen, in 1911; for producing compounds of nitrogen and cyanogen, in 1912 and 1913; for obtaining various gases, in 1913; and for the electrolytic production of alkali and alkali-earth metals and nitrogen compounds, in 1915. He was the patentee, also, of improved electrodes and conductors for electric furnaces, in 1903, and of detinning processes and methods for treating detinned iron and residue, in 1907.
For a number of years he was a resident of Ossining, New York, where he was director of the Westchester County Bureau of Municipal Research.
He died in New York.
Acker's inventions, which were protected by over forty patents, American and foreign, covered a wide range in electro-chemistry and electro-metallurgy. He was the first in America to produce carbon and tin tetrachlorids on a commercial scale, as well as the actual founder of several special branches of electro-chemistry and electro-metallurgy. Perfecting process for producing caustic soda and chlorine from the electrolysis of molten salt won him the Elliott Cresson Gold Medal of the Franklin Institute in 1902.
Acker was a member of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, the American Chemical Society, the Faraday Society, the Society of Chemical Industry of London, the New York State Historical Association. He was also a director of the American Electro-chemical Society (1905-1910).
Acker's wife was Alice Reynolds Beal, to whom he was married in 1892. They had one daughter.
