Hot blast iron smelting in the early 19th century: a re-appraisal
##plugins.themes.bootstrap3.article.main##
##plugins.themes.bootstrap3.article.sidebar##
Published
Nov 9, 2021
Abstract
The introduction of hot blast was the most important development in early 19th century iron smelting. The conventional story of James Beaumont Nielson’s 1828 patent has been widely accepted since the 1840s. This paper re-appraises the development of hot blast in the light of an earlier patent of Thomas Botfield, and suggests that many elements of Botfield’s development anticipated those of Nielson. The role of Gilbert Gilpin, and through him connections with John Wilkinson and the iron industry in South Wales, are also discussed. It is argued that the early development of hot blast iron smelting in fact remains poorly understood, and some suggestions are made for improving understanding.
##plugins.themes.bootstrap3.article.details##
Keywords
References
Alexander J H 1840, Report on the manufacture of iron, addressed to the governor of Maryland (Baltimore).
Allen R C 1977, ‘The peculiar productivity history of American blast furnaces, 1840-1913’, Journal of Economic History 37(3), 605-633.
Allen R C 1983, ‘Collective invention’, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 4, 1-24.
Anon 1842, The trial before Lord Justice-Clerk, and a special jury, of the issues in the action of count, reckoning, payment, and damages, at the instance of James Beaumont Nielson of Glasgow, Engineer, and others against the Househill Coal and Iron Company etc. (Edinburgh).
Anon 1873, ‘Whitwell’s fire-brick stove for superheating blast in iron smelting’, Journal of the Franklin Institute 95(1), 49-51.
Beauchamp C 2010, ‘Who invented the telephone? Lawyers, patents, and the judgments of history’, Technology and Culture 51(4), 854-878.
Belford P 2011, Stirchley Furnaces, Telford Town Park: Archaeological Investigations. Nexus Heritage unpublished report 3072.R01.
Birch A 1967, The economic history of the British iron and steel industry 1784-1879 (London).
Blackwell S H 1853, ‘On the arrangement of the materials in the blast furnace, and the application of the waste gases’, Journal of the Franklin Institute 55(3), 188-193.
Bone W A 1928, ‘The invention of the hot blast in iron smelting’, Nature 122, 728.
Brose E D 1985, ‘Competitiveness and Obsolescence in the German Charcoal Iron Industry’, Technology and Culture 26(3), 532-559.
Brown I J 1998, ‘Industrial archaeological aspects of land reclamation in the UK’, in H R Fox, H M Moore and A D MacIntosh (eds), Land reclamation: achieving sustainable benefits (Rotterdam), 305-313.
Campbell R H 1955, ‘Developments in the Scottish pig-iron trade, 1844-1848’, Journal of Economic History 15(3), 209-226.
Clark T 1836, ‘On the application of the hot blast in the manufacture of cast iron’, Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 13, 373-391.
Clarke N J nd, Gilbert Gilpin 1766-1827: agent, trade correspondent and chain maker, Broseley Local History Society website: http://www.oldcopper.org.uk/Broseley/gilbert_gilpin.htm [accessed 28 April 2012].
Corrins R D 1970, ‘The Great Hot Blast Affair’, Industrial Archaeology 7(3), 233-263.
Council R B, Honerkamp N and Will M E 1992, Industry and technology in antebellum Tennessee: the archaeology of Bluff Furnace (Knoxville).
Cowper E A 1866, ‘On the effect of blowing blast furnaces with blast of very high temperature’, Journal of the Franklin Institute 81(1), 46-48.
Crane G 1837, ‘On the smelting of iron with anthracite coal’, The Mechanics Magazine 28, 116-119.
Cranstone D 1991, ‘Isaac Wilkinson at Backbarrow’, Historical Metallurgy 25(2), 87-91.
Daub E E 1974, ‘The regenerator principle in the Stirling and Ericsson hot air engines’, British Journal for the History of Science 7(27), 259-277.
Dutton H I 1984, The patent system and inventive activity during the Industrial Revolution (Manchester).
Eggert G C 1994, The iron industry in Pennsylvania (Middletown: Pennsylvania History Studies 25).
Evans C 1990, ‘Gilbert Gilpin: a witness to the south Wales iron industry in its ascendancy’, Morgannwg 34, 30-38.
Evans C 1993, ‘The statistical surveys of the British iron industry in 1797-98 and 1806’, Historical Metallurgy 27(2), 84-101.
Evans C and Rydén G 2005, ‘The industrial revolution in iron: an introduction’, in C Evans and G Rydén (eds), The industrial revolution in iron: the impact of British coal technology in nineteenth-century Europe (Aldershot), 1-15.
Fremdling R 2000, ‘Transfer patterns of British technology to the Continent: the case of the iron industry’, European Review of Economic History 4(2), 195-222.
Gale W K V 1971, The iron and steel industry: a dictionary of terms (Newton Abbot).
Guise-Richardson, C 2010, ‘Redefining Vulcanization: Charles Goodyear, patents, and industrial control, 1834-1865’, Technology and Culture 51(2), 357-387.
Hadfield C 1985, The canals of the West Midlands (Newton Abbot).
Hayman R 2004, ‘The Cranage brothers and eighteenth century forge technology’, Historical Metallurgy 38(2), 113-120.
Hayman R 2008, ‘Charcoal ironmaking in nineteenth-century Shropshire’, Economic History Review 61(1), 80-98.
Howell B B 1838, ‘Notes on the smelting of iron by means of anthracite, and of the origin of the hot blast in the manufacture of that metal’, Journal of the Franklin Institute 25(3), 166-168.
Hyde C K 1977, Technological change and the British iron industry 1700-1870 (Princeton).
Ince L 1989, ‘Water power and cylinder blowing in early South Wales coke ironworks’, Historical Metallurgy 23(2), 108-112.
King P W 2002, ‘Dud Dudley’s contribution to metallurgy’, Historical Metallurgy 36(1), 43-53.
Lawton, B 2011, ‘A short history of large gas engines’, International Journal for the History of Engineering and Technology 81(1), 79-107.
Luter P A 2005, The history of ironmaking in Dawley (privately published).
MacLeod C 1988, Inventing the Industrial Revolution: the English patent system, 1660-1800 (Cambridge).
MacLeod C 1991, ‘The paradoxes of patenting: invention and its diffusion in 18th- and 19th-century Britain, France, and North America’, Technology and Culture 32(4), 885-910.
MacLeod C and Nuvolari A 2010, Patents and industrialisation: an historical overview of the British case, 1624-1907, Report to the Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property Policy (London).
Malin J 1827, ‘Description of a furnace for making iron, by means of anthracite’, Journal of the Franklin Institute 4(4), 217-219.
Marten H 1859, ‘On the construction of hot blast ovens for blast furnaces’, Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, 62-91.
McGeorge A 1875, The Bairds of Gartsherrie (Glasgow).
Mitchell B R 1984, Economic development of the British coal industry 1800-1914 (Cambridge).
Morton G R 1966, ‘The early coke era’, Historical Metallurgy Group Bulletin 6, 53-57.
Nuvolari A 2004, ‘Collective invention during the British industrial revolution: the case of the Cornish pumping engine’, Cambridge Journal of Economics 28, 347-363.
Page W (ed) 1908, The Victoria History of Shropshire: Volume 1 (London).
Percy J 1864, Metallurgy: iron and steel (London).
Plumpe G 1982, Die württembergische Eisenindustrie im 19. Jahrhundert (Wiesbaden)
Pollard G C and Klaus H D 2004, ‘A large business: The Clintonville site, resources, and scale at Adirondack bloomery forges’, IA: The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archeology 30(1), 19-46.
Randall J 1879, Our coal and iron industries, and the men who have wrought in connection with them: the Wilkinsons, with a portrait of John Wilkinson, etc (Madeley).
Rees R 2008, The black mystery: coal mining in south-west Wales (Talybont, Ceredigion).
Rehder J E 2000, The mastery and uses of fire in antiquity (Montreal).
Richards R H 1884, ‘The hot blast in making iron’, Science 3(50), 72-73.
Riden P and Owen J G 1995, British blast furnace statistics 1790-1980 (Chesterfield).
Samson R 1998, The Forges du Saint-Maurice: beginnings of the iron and steel industry in Canada, 1730-1883 (Québec).
Sier R 1995, Robert Stirling, inventor of the heat economiser and Stirling cycle engine (Chelmsford).
Smiles S 1863, Industrial biography: iron workers and tool makers (London).
Smith S B 1977, ‘Ironworks excavation, Old Park 1976’, Bulletin of the Association for Industrial Archaeology 3(6), 8-12.
Smith W E 1966, ‘The Bradley ironworks of John Wilkinson’, Historical Metallurgy Group Bulletin 6, 57-58.
Swanson K W 2009, ‘The emergence of the professional patent practitioner’, Technology and Culture 50(3), 519-548.
Thomson T (ed) 1870, A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen (Glasgow and Edinburgh).
Trinder B 2000, The Industrial Revolution in Shropshire, 3rd edn (Chichester).
Urban S 1860, ‘Stemmata Botevilliana’, Gentlemen’s Magazine and Historical Review 9, 467-476.
Webster T 1844, Reports and notes of cases on letters patent for inventions (London).
Williams P N 1994, ‘David Thomas: father of the American anthracite industry’, Historical Metallurgy 28(1), 27-32.
Yates W R 1974, ‘Discovery of the process for making anthracite iron’, The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 98(2), 206-223.
Allen R C 1977, ‘The peculiar productivity history of American blast furnaces, 1840-1913’, Journal of Economic History 37(3), 605-633.
Allen R C 1983, ‘Collective invention’, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 4, 1-24.
Anon 1842, The trial before Lord Justice-Clerk, and a special jury, of the issues in the action of count, reckoning, payment, and damages, at the instance of James Beaumont Nielson of Glasgow, Engineer, and others against the Househill Coal and Iron Company etc. (Edinburgh).
Anon 1873, ‘Whitwell’s fire-brick stove for superheating blast in iron smelting’, Journal of the Franklin Institute 95(1), 49-51.
Beauchamp C 2010, ‘Who invented the telephone? Lawyers, patents, and the judgments of history’, Technology and Culture 51(4), 854-878.
Belford P 2011, Stirchley Furnaces, Telford Town Park: Archaeological Investigations. Nexus Heritage unpublished report 3072.R01.
Birch A 1967, The economic history of the British iron and steel industry 1784-1879 (London).
Blackwell S H 1853, ‘On the arrangement of the materials in the blast furnace, and the application of the waste gases’, Journal of the Franklin Institute 55(3), 188-193.
Bone W A 1928, ‘The invention of the hot blast in iron smelting’, Nature 122, 728.
Brose E D 1985, ‘Competitiveness and Obsolescence in the German Charcoal Iron Industry’, Technology and Culture 26(3), 532-559.
Brown I J 1998, ‘Industrial archaeological aspects of land reclamation in the UK’, in H R Fox, H M Moore and A D MacIntosh (eds), Land reclamation: achieving sustainable benefits (Rotterdam), 305-313.
Campbell R H 1955, ‘Developments in the Scottish pig-iron trade, 1844-1848’, Journal of Economic History 15(3), 209-226.
Clark T 1836, ‘On the application of the hot blast in the manufacture of cast iron’, Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 13, 373-391.
Clarke N J nd, Gilbert Gilpin 1766-1827: agent, trade correspondent and chain maker, Broseley Local History Society website: http://www.oldcopper.org.uk/Broseley/gilbert_gilpin.htm [accessed 28 April 2012].
Corrins R D 1970, ‘The Great Hot Blast Affair’, Industrial Archaeology 7(3), 233-263.
Council R B, Honerkamp N and Will M E 1992, Industry and technology in antebellum Tennessee: the archaeology of Bluff Furnace (Knoxville).
Cowper E A 1866, ‘On the effect of blowing blast furnaces with blast of very high temperature’, Journal of the Franklin Institute 81(1), 46-48.
Crane G 1837, ‘On the smelting of iron with anthracite coal’, The Mechanics Magazine 28, 116-119.
Cranstone D 1991, ‘Isaac Wilkinson at Backbarrow’, Historical Metallurgy 25(2), 87-91.
Daub E E 1974, ‘The regenerator principle in the Stirling and Ericsson hot air engines’, British Journal for the History of Science 7(27), 259-277.
Dutton H I 1984, The patent system and inventive activity during the Industrial Revolution (Manchester).
Eggert G C 1994, The iron industry in Pennsylvania (Middletown: Pennsylvania History Studies 25).
Evans C 1990, ‘Gilbert Gilpin: a witness to the south Wales iron industry in its ascendancy’, Morgannwg 34, 30-38.
Evans C 1993, ‘The statistical surveys of the British iron industry in 1797-98 and 1806’, Historical Metallurgy 27(2), 84-101.
Evans C and Rydén G 2005, ‘The industrial revolution in iron: an introduction’, in C Evans and G Rydén (eds), The industrial revolution in iron: the impact of British coal technology in nineteenth-century Europe (Aldershot), 1-15.
Fremdling R 2000, ‘Transfer patterns of British technology to the Continent: the case of the iron industry’, European Review of Economic History 4(2), 195-222.
Gale W K V 1971, The iron and steel industry: a dictionary of terms (Newton Abbot).
Guise-Richardson, C 2010, ‘Redefining Vulcanization: Charles Goodyear, patents, and industrial control, 1834-1865’, Technology and Culture 51(2), 357-387.
Hadfield C 1985, The canals of the West Midlands (Newton Abbot).
Hayman R 2004, ‘The Cranage brothers and eighteenth century forge technology’, Historical Metallurgy 38(2), 113-120.
Hayman R 2008, ‘Charcoal ironmaking in nineteenth-century Shropshire’, Economic History Review 61(1), 80-98.
Howell B B 1838, ‘Notes on the smelting of iron by means of anthracite, and of the origin of the hot blast in the manufacture of that metal’, Journal of the Franklin Institute 25(3), 166-168.
Hyde C K 1977, Technological change and the British iron industry 1700-1870 (Princeton).
Ince L 1989, ‘Water power and cylinder blowing in early South Wales coke ironworks’, Historical Metallurgy 23(2), 108-112.
King P W 2002, ‘Dud Dudley’s contribution to metallurgy’, Historical Metallurgy 36(1), 43-53.
Lawton, B 2011, ‘A short history of large gas engines’, International Journal for the History of Engineering and Technology 81(1), 79-107.
Luter P A 2005, The history of ironmaking in Dawley (privately published).
MacLeod C 1988, Inventing the Industrial Revolution: the English patent system, 1660-1800 (Cambridge).
MacLeod C 1991, ‘The paradoxes of patenting: invention and its diffusion in 18th- and 19th-century Britain, France, and North America’, Technology and Culture 32(4), 885-910.
MacLeod C and Nuvolari A 2010, Patents and industrialisation: an historical overview of the British case, 1624-1907, Report to the Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property Policy (London).
Malin J 1827, ‘Description of a furnace for making iron, by means of anthracite’, Journal of the Franklin Institute 4(4), 217-219.
Marten H 1859, ‘On the construction of hot blast ovens for blast furnaces’, Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, 62-91.
McGeorge A 1875, The Bairds of Gartsherrie (Glasgow).
Mitchell B R 1984, Economic development of the British coal industry 1800-1914 (Cambridge).
Morton G R 1966, ‘The early coke era’, Historical Metallurgy Group Bulletin 6, 53-57.
Nuvolari A 2004, ‘Collective invention during the British industrial revolution: the case of the Cornish pumping engine’, Cambridge Journal of Economics 28, 347-363.
Page W (ed) 1908, The Victoria History of Shropshire: Volume 1 (London).
Percy J 1864, Metallurgy: iron and steel (London).
Plumpe G 1982, Die württembergische Eisenindustrie im 19. Jahrhundert (Wiesbaden)
Pollard G C and Klaus H D 2004, ‘A large business: The Clintonville site, resources, and scale at Adirondack bloomery forges’, IA: The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archeology 30(1), 19-46.
Randall J 1879, Our coal and iron industries, and the men who have wrought in connection with them: the Wilkinsons, with a portrait of John Wilkinson, etc (Madeley).
Rees R 2008, The black mystery: coal mining in south-west Wales (Talybont, Ceredigion).
Rehder J E 2000, The mastery and uses of fire in antiquity (Montreal).
Richards R H 1884, ‘The hot blast in making iron’, Science 3(50), 72-73.
Riden P and Owen J G 1995, British blast furnace statistics 1790-1980 (Chesterfield).
Samson R 1998, The Forges du Saint-Maurice: beginnings of the iron and steel industry in Canada, 1730-1883 (Québec).
Sier R 1995, Robert Stirling, inventor of the heat economiser and Stirling cycle engine (Chelmsford).
Smiles S 1863, Industrial biography: iron workers and tool makers (London).
Smith S B 1977, ‘Ironworks excavation, Old Park 1976’, Bulletin of the Association for Industrial Archaeology 3(6), 8-12.
Smith W E 1966, ‘The Bradley ironworks of John Wilkinson’, Historical Metallurgy Group Bulletin 6, 57-58.
Swanson K W 2009, ‘The emergence of the professional patent practitioner’, Technology and Culture 50(3), 519-548.
Thomson T (ed) 1870, A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen (Glasgow and Edinburgh).
Trinder B 2000, The Industrial Revolution in Shropshire, 3rd edn (Chichester).
Urban S 1860, ‘Stemmata Botevilliana’, Gentlemen’s Magazine and Historical Review 9, 467-476.
Webster T 1844, Reports and notes of cases on letters patent for inventions (London).
Williams P N 1994, ‘David Thomas: father of the American anthracite industry’, Historical Metallurgy 28(1), 27-32.
Yates W R 1974, ‘Discovery of the process for making anthracite iron’, The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 98(2), 206-223.
How to Cite
Belford, P. . (2021). Hot blast iron smelting in the early 19th century: a re-appraisal. Historical Metallurgy, 46(1), 32-44. https://hmsjournal.org/index.php/home/article/view/124
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Belford, P. . (2021). Hot blast iron smelting in the early 19th century: a re-appraisal. Historical Metallurgy, 46(1), 32-44. https://hmsjournal.org/index.php/home/article/view/124