I set out below an announcement I have posted on another
list.
Peter King
----- Original Message -----
Sent: 15 February 2001 15:48
Subject: The adoption of coal in metallurgy
Newcomen Society lecture in Birmingham
at Birmingham Museum of Science and Industry, Newhall
Street
at 7 p.m. on 7 March: doors open at 6.30 (non-members
welcome)
I will be addressing the Birmingham branch of the Newcomen
Society on 'Sir Clement Clerke and the adoption of coal in metallurgy'.
What I will have to say constitutes a substantial revision of
what has previously been published about the history and more particularly
chronology of the transition from the use of charcoal (or wood) to coal in
smelting lead, copper, and iron. There will be little (if
anything) that is novel in respect of the technology as
such, and much more about who and when. There will be new details of:
- Dud Dudley's smelting lead at Bristol in the 1650s
- Dud Dudley's furnace at Dudley built probably in the 1660s,
which smelted iron with 'charcoal made of wood and pitcoal together to be
blown and set on work by the strength of men and horses'
- The events surrounding Sir Clement and Lord Grandison in
smelting lead in the late 1670s and 1680s, of Sir Clement smelting
copper in the late 1680s at Putney
- Iron founding in the 1690s
- Smelting iron with pitcoal in the 1690s.
Amongst other things I will be arguing that Shadrach Fox
smelted iron with pitcoal at Coalbrookdale in the 1690s and that Sir Clement
provides a link between Dud Dudley and the successes of the 1690s and
1700s.
Because of the relatively distant date I regret that there
will only be a limited amount of illustration at most.
Peter King
