Lloyd Hall

Lloyd Hall was born on June 20, 1894 in Elgin, Illinois. His grandmother came to Illinois via the "Underground Railroad" at the age of sixteen and his grandfather came to Chicago in 1837. Hall’s family eventually moved to Aurora, Illinois where he attended West Side High School. While he was in high school, he was an honor student; the captain of the school debate team; and competed in baseball, football and track. Hall graduated in 1912 in the top 10 of his class.

After graduating school, Hall studied pharmaceutical chemistry at Northwestern University, earning his bachelor degree in the field. He then earned his master's at the University of Chicago. At Northwestern, Hall met Carroll L. Griffith, who would later go on to become the founder of Griffith Laboratories.

Hall was soon hired by the Western Electric Company through a telephone interview. When he showed up for his first day, however, he was told by a personnel officer that “we don’t take niggers.” He then began working for the Chicago Department of Health as a chemist and was promoted in 1917 to senior chemist. The next year he moved to Ottumwa, Iowa where he held the position of chief chemist at the John Morrell Company. During this time, World War I broke out and Hall received an appointment as Chief Inspector of Powder and Explosives for the United States Ordnance Department.

On September 23, 1919 Lloyd married Myrrhene Newsome, a teacher from Macomb, Illinois. Two years later, the couple moved to Chicago where Lloyd began working for the Boyer Chemical Laboratory where he took the position of chief chemist and focused on the emerging field of food chemistry, and began looking at a way of preserving meats with chemicals. In 1922 he moved on to Chemical Products Corporation where he served as President and Chemical director of their consulting laboratory and often consulted with Griffith Laboratories. In 1925, Hall was offered a position with Griffith Laboratories as chief chemist and director of research. Hall accepted the position and remained there for the next 34 years.

Hall had been working for a number of years exploring different areas of food chemistry and upon joining Griffith Laboratories began looking into methods for preserving foods. Up to that point, foods, and especially meats had been preserved by using table salt. Nitrogen-containing chemicals were also used to preserve meats. It was found that nitrates chemically changed into nitrites and then into nitrous acid caused the meats to maintain a healthy, red color (the process was referred to as curing meat). Hall found, however, that when sodium chloride, sodium nitrate, and sodium nitrite were used in order to preserve and cure the meat, the nitrates and nitrites penetrated the meat much faster than did the sodium chloride. In doing so, the nitrates and nitrites adversely affected the meat by breaking it down before the sodium chloride had a chance to preserve it. In order to correct this, Hall found a while of encasing the nitrates and nitrites within a sodium chloride “shell” by utilizing a process called “flash-drying” the crystals over heated rollers. This allowed the sodium nitrate to be introduced to the meats first and dissolved, and then the nitrates and nitrites were able to penetrate the “preserved” meat and therefore “cure” it.

Hall next addressed a problem which arose when meats were stored in containers. The sodium chloride/nitrate/nitrite combination tended to absorb the moisture from the air inside the container and caused them to form a caked mass on top of the meat. Hall was able to determine that by adding a glycerin and alkali metal tartrate to the original combination, the glycerin and tartrate would effectively absorb the moisture without “caking” and thus preventing the chloride/nitrate/nitrite combination from absorbing it.

Hall also maintained an interest in sterilizing foods, utensils, and tools. Although many people thought that certain spices and flavorings also had the added benefit of preserving foods, Hall found that many of these agents actually exposed the foods to an abundance of germs, molds, and bacteria. Hall set out to prevent this while at the same time allowing the spices and flavorings to retain the aroma and color (many of these lost their color and aroma and flavor when exposed to high, sterilizing temperatures.) He eventually found a gas called ethylene oxide, which he introduced to the foods within a vacuumed environment which eliminated the germs and bacteria while maintaining appearances, taste, and aroma.

These contributions to food preservation and sterilization revolutionized the way foods were processed, prepared, packed and transported, eliminating spoilage and health hazards and improving efficiency and profitability for food suppliers. In the course of his work, Hall would publish more than 5 scientific papers and receive more than 100 patents. He also served as an advisor to the United States during two World Wars, served on dozens of advisory panels and boards and received hundreds of awards and accolades.

In 1959, Lloyd Hall retired from Griffith Laboratories and moved to Pasadena, California where he died in 1971. He left behind a legacy as a pioneer in the field of food chemistry and is responsible for improving health conditions in all areas of the food industry.