Alcor Life Extension Foundation

In 1972, Alcor was incorporated as the Alcor Society for Solid State Hypothermia in the State of California by Fred and Linda Chamberlain. (The name was changed to Alcor Life Extension Foundation in 1977.) The nonprofit organization was conceived as a rational, technology-oriented cryonics organization that would be managed on a fiscally conservative basis by a self perpetuating Board. Alcor advertised in direct mailings and offered seminars in order to attract members and bring attention to the cryonics movement. On July 16, 1976, Alcor performed its first human cryopreservation. At this time, Alcor’s office consisted of a mobile surgical unit in a large van. Trans Time, Inc., a cryonics organization in the San Francisco Bay Area, provided long-term patient storage until Alcor began doing its own storage in 1982. By 1990 Alcor had grown to 300 members. In response to concerns that the California facility was too small and vulnerable to earthquake risk, the organization purchased a building in Scottsdale, Arizona in 1993 and moved its patients to it in 1994. In 1997, after a substantial effort led by then-president Steve Bridge, Alcor formed the Patient Care Trust as an entirely separate entity to manage and protect the funding for cryopatients. Alcor remains the only cryonics organization to segregate and protect patient funding in this way. Alcor currently has around 1,000 members and 117 patients.