Industrial Biography

S >> Samuel Smiles >> Industrial Biography

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28

The plan, however, after having been duly considered, was eventually
set aside, and another, with the entire arch of cast-iron, was
prepared under the superintendence of Abraham Darby, by Mr. Thomas
Gregory, his foreman of pattem-makers. This plan was adopted, and
arrangements were forthwith made for carrying it into effect. The
abutments of the bridge were built in 1777-8, during which the
castings were made at the foundry, and the ironwork was successfully
erected in the course of three months. The bridge was opened for
traffic in 1779, and proved a most serviceable structure. In 1788 the
Society of Arts recognised Mr. Darby's merit as its designer and
erector by presenting him with their gold medal; and the model of the
bridge is still to be seen in the collection of the Society. Mr.
Robert Stephenson has said of the structure: " If we consider that
the manipulation of cast-iron was then completely in its infancy, a
bridge of such dimensions was doubtless a bold as well as an original
undertaking, and the efficiency of the details is worthy of the
boldness of the conception."*
[footnote...
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 8th ed. Art. "Iron Bridges."
...]
Mr. Stephenson adds that from a defect in the construction the
abutments were thrust inwards at the approaches and the ribs
partially fractured. We are, however, informed that this is a
mistake, though it does appear that the apprehension at one time
existed that such an accident might possibly occur.

To remedy the supposed defect, two small land arches were, in the
year 1800, substituted for the stone approach on the Broseley side of
the bridge. While the work was in progress, Mr. Telford, the
well-known engineer, carefully examined the bridge, and thus spoke of
its condition at the time: -- "The great improvement of erecting upon
a navigable river a bridge of cast-iron of one arch only was first
put in practice near Coalbrookdale. The bridge was executed in 1777
by Mr. Abraham Darby, and the ironwork is now quite as perfect as
when it was first put up. Drawings of this bridge have long been
before the public, and have been much and justly admired."*
[footnote...
PLYMLEY, General View of the Agriculture of Shropshire.
...]
A Coalbrookdale correspondent, writing in May, 1862, informs us that
"at the present time the bridge is undergoing repair; and, special
examination having been made, there is no appearance either that the
abutments have moved, or that the ribs have been broken in the centre
or are out of their proper right line. There has, it is true, been a
strain on the land arches, and on the roadway plates, which, however,
the main arch has been able effectually to resist."

The bridge has now been in profitable daily use for upwards of eighty
years, and has during that time proved of the greatest convenience to
the population of the district. So judicious was the selection of its
site, and so great its utility, that a thriving town of the name of
Ironbridge has grown up around it upon what, at the time of its
erection, was a nameless part of "the waste of the manor of Madeley."
And it is probable that the bridge will last for centuries to come.
Thus, also, was the use of iron as an important material in
bridge-building fairly initiated at Coalbrookdale by Abraham Darby,
as the use of iron rails was by Richard Reynolds. We need scarcely
add that since the invention and extensive adoption of railway
locomotion, the employment of iron in various forms in railway and
bridge structures has rapidly increased, until iron has come to be
regarded as the very sheet-anchor of the railway engineer.

In the mean time the works at Coalbrookdale had become largely
extended. In 1784, when the government of the day proposed to levy a
tax on pit-coal, Richard Reynolds strongly urged upon Mr. Pitt, then
Chancellor of the Exchequer, as well as on Lord Gower, afterwards
Marquis of Stafford, the impolicy of such a tax. To the latter he
represented that large capitals had been invested in the iron trade,
which was with difficulty carried on in the face of the competition
with Swedish and Russian iron. At Coalbrookdale, sixteen "fire
engines," as steam engines were first called, were then at work,
eight blast-furnaces and nine forges, besides the air furnaces and
mills at the foundry, which, with the levels, roads, and more than
twenty miles of iron railways, gave employment to a very large number
of people. "The advancement of the iron trade within these few
years," said he, "has been prodigious. It was thought, and justly,
that the making of pig-iron with pit coal was a great acquisition to
the country by saving the wood and supplying a material to
manufactures, the production of which, by the consumption of all the
wood the country produced, was formerly unequal to the demand, and
the nail trade, perhaps the most considerable of any one article of
manufactured iron, would have been lost to this country had it not
been found practicable to make nails of iron made with pit coal. We
have now another process to attempt, and that is to make BAR IRON
with pit coal; and it is for that purpose we have made, or rather are
making, alterations at Donnington Wood, Ketley, and elsewhere, which
we expect to complete in the present year, but not at a less expense
than twenty thousand pounds, which will be lost to us, and gained by
nobody, if this tax is laid upon our coals." He would not, however,
have it understood that he sought for any PROTECTION for the homemade
iron, notwithstanding the lower prices of the foreign article. "From
its most imperfect state as pig-iron," he observed to Lord Sheffield,
"to its highest finish in the regulating springs of a watch, we have
nothing to fear if the importation into each country should be
permitted without duty." We need scarcely add that the subsequent
history of the iron trade abundantly justified these sagacious
anticipations of Richard Reynolds.

He was now far advanced in years. His business had prospered, his
means were ample, and he sought retirement. He did not desire to
possess great wealth, which in his opinion entailed such serious
responsibilities upon its possessor; and he held that the
accumulation of large property was more to be deprecated than
desired. He therefore determined to give up his shares in the
ironworks at Ketley to his sons William and Joseph, who continued to
carry them on. William was a man of eminent ability, well versed in
science, and an excellent mechanic. He introduced great improvements
in the working of the coal and iron mines, employing new machinery
for the purpose, and availing himself with much ingenuity of the
discoveries then being made in the science of chemistry. He was also
an inventor, having been the first to employ (in 1788) inclined
planes, consisting of parallel railways, to connect and work canals
of different levels,--an invention erroneously attributed to Fulton,
but which the latter himself acknowledged to belong to William
Reynolds. In the first chapter of his 'Treatise on Canal Navigation,'
published in 1796, Fulton says: -- "As local prejudices opposed the
Duke of Bridgewater's canal in the first instance, prejudices equally
strong as firmly adhered to the principle on which it was
constructed; and it was thought impossible to lead one through a
country, or to work it to any advantage, unless by locks and boats of
at least twenty-five tons, till the genius of Mr. William Reynolds,
of Ketley, in Shropshire, stepped from the accustomed path,
constructed the first inclined plane, and introduced boats of five
tons. This, like the Duke's canal, was deemed a visionary project,
and particularly by his Grace, who was partial to locks; yet this is
also introduced into practice, and will in many instances supersede
lock canals." Telford, the engineer, also gracefully acknowledged the
valuable assistance he received from William Reynolds in planning the
iron aqueduct by means of which the Ellesmere Canal was carried over
the Pont Cysylltau, and in executing the necessary castings for the
purpose at the Ketley foundry.

The future management of his extensive ironworks being thus placed in
able hands, Richard Reynolds finally left Coalbrookdale in 1804, for
Bristol, his native town, where he spent the remainder of his life in
works of charity and mercy. Here we might leave the subject, but
cannot refrain from adding a few concluding words as to the moral
characteristics of this truly good man. Though habitually religious,
he was neither demure nor morose, but cheerful, gay, and humorous. He
took great interest in the pleasures of the young people about him,
and exerted himself in all ways to promote their happiness. He was
fond of books, pictures, poetry, and music, though the indulgence of
artistic tastes is not thought becoming in the Society to which he
belonged. His love for the beauties of nature amounted almost to a
passion, and when living at The Bank, near Ketley, it was his great
delight in the summer evenings to retire with his pipe to a rural
seat commanding a full view of the Wrekin, the Ercall Woods, with
Cader Idris and the Montgomeryshire hills in the distance, and watch
the sun go down in the west in his glory. Once in every year he
assembled a large party to spend a day with him on the Wrekin, and
amongst those invited were the principal clerks in the company's
employment, together with their families. At Madeley, near
Coalbrookdale, where he bought a property, he laid out, for the
express use of the workmen, extensive walks through the woods on
Lincoln Hill, commanding beautiful views. They were called "The
Workmen's Walks," and were a source of great enjoyment to them and
their families, especially on Sunday afternoons.

When Mr. Reynolds went to London on business, he was accustomed to
make a round of visits, on his way home, to places remarkable for
their picturesque beauty, such as Stowe, Hagley Park, and the
Leasowes. After a visit to the latter place in 1767, he thus, in a
letter to his friend John Maccappen, vindicated his love for the
beautiful in nature: -- "I think it not only lawful but expedient to
cultivate a disposition to be pleased with the beauties of nature, by
frequent indulgences for that purpose. The mind, by being continually
applied to the consideration of ways and means to gain money,
contracts an indifferency if not an insensibility to the profusion of
beauties which the benevolent Creator has impressed upon every part
of the material creation. A sordid love of gold, the possession of
what gold can purchase, and the reputation of being rich, have so
depraved the finer feelings of some men, that they pass through the
most delightful grove, filled with the melody of nature, or listen to
the murmurings of the brook in the valley, with as little pleasure
and with no more of the vernal delight which Milton describes, than
they feel in passing through some obscure alley in a town."

When in the prime of life, Mr. Reynolds was an excellent rider,
performing all his journeys on horseback. He used to give a ludicrous
account of a race he once ran with another youth, each having a lady
seated on a pillion behind him; Mr. Reynolds reached the goal first,
but when he looked round he found that he had lost his fair
companion, who had fallen off in the race! On another occasion he had
a hard run with Lord Thurlow during a visit paid by the latter to the
Ketley Iron-Works. Lord Thurlow pulled up his horse first, and
observed, laughing, "I think, Mr. Reynolds, this is probably the
first time that ever a Lord Chancellor rode a race with a Quaker!"
But a stranger rencontre was one which befel Mr. Reynolds on
Blackheath. Though he declined Government orders for cannon, he seems
to have had a secret hankering after the "pomp and circumstance" of
military life. At all event's he was present on Blackheath one day
when George III. was reviewing some troops. Mr. Reynold's horse, an
old trooper, no sooner heard the sound of the trumpet than he started
off at full speed, and made directly for the group of officers before
whom the troops were defiling. Great was the surprise of the King
when he saw the Quaker draw up alongside of him, but still greater,
perhaps, was the confusion of the Quaker at finding himself in such
company.

During the later years of his life, while living at Bristol, his hand
was in every good work; and it was often felt where it was not seen.
For he carefully avoided ostentation, and preferred doing his good in
secret. He strongly disapproved of making charitable bequests by
will, which he observed in many cases to have been the foundation of
enormous abuses, but held it to be the duty of each man to do all the
possible good that he could during his lifetime. Many were the
instances of his princely, though at the time unknown, munificence.
Unwilling to be recognised as the giver of large sums, he employed
agents to dispense his anonymous benefactions. He thus sent 20,000L.
to London to be distributed during the distress of 1795. He had four
almoners constantly employed in Bristol, finding out cases of
distress, relieving them, and presenting their accounts to him
weekly, with details of the cases relieved. He searched the debtors'
prisons, and where, as often happened, deserving but unfortunate men
were found confined for debt, he paid the claims against them and
procured their release. Such a man could not fail to be followed with
blessings and gratitude; but these he sought to direct to the Giver
of all Good. "My talent," said he to a friend, "is the meanest of all
talents--a little sordid dust; but as the man in the parable who had
but one talent was held accountable, I also am accountable for the
talent that I possess, humble as it is, to the great Lord of all." On
one occasion the case of a poor orphan boy was submitted to him,
whose parents, both dying young, had left him destitute, on which Mr.
Reynolds generously offered to place a sum in the names of trustees
for his education and maintenance until he could be apprenticed to a
business. The lady who represented the case was so overpowered by the
munificence of the act that she burst into tears, and, struggling to
express her gratitude, concluded with--"and when the dear child is
old enough, I will teach him to thank his benefactor." "Thou must
teach him to look higher," interrupted Reynolds: "Do we thank the
clouds for rain? When the child grows up, teach him to thank Him who
sendeth both the clouds and the rain." Reynolds himself deplored his
infirmity of temper, which was by nature hasty; and, as his
benevolence was known, and appeals were made to him at all times,
seasonable and unseasonable, he sometimes met them with a sharp word,
which, however, he had scarcely uttered before he repented of it: and
he is known to have followed a poor woman to her home and ask
forgiveness for having spoken hastily in answer to her application
for help.

This "great good man" died on the l0th of September, 1816, in the
81st year of his age. At his funeral the poor of Bristol were the
chief mourners. The children of the benevolent societies which he had
munificently supported during his lifetime, and some of which he had
founded, followed his body to the grave. The procession was joined by
the clergy and ministers of all denominations, and by men of all
classes and persuasions. And thus was Richard Reynolds laid to his
rest, leaving behind him a name full of good odour, which will long
be held in grateful remembrance by the inhabitants of Bristol.

CHAPTER VI.

INVENTION OF CAST STEEL--BENJAMIN HUNTSMAN.

"It may be averred that as certainly as the age of iron superseded
that of bronze, so will the age of steel reign triumphant over
iron."-- HENRY BESSEMER.

"Aujourd'hui la revolution que devait amener en Grande-Bretagne la
memorable decouverte de Benjamin Huntsman est tout a fait
accomplie, et chaque jour les consequetces sen feront plus vivement
sentir sur le confinent."--LE PLAY, Sur la Fabricatio n de l' Acier
en Yorkshire.

Iron, besides being used in various forms as bar and cast iron, is
also used in various forms as bar and cast steel; and it is
principally because of its many admirable qualities in these latter
forms that iron maintains its supremacy over all the other metals.

The process of converting iron into steel had long been known among
the Eastern nations before it was introduced into Europe. The Hindoos
were especially skilled in the art of making steel, as indeed they
are to this day; and it is supposed that the tools with which the
Egyptians covered their obelisks and temples of porphyry and syenite
with hieroglyphics were made of Indian steel, as probably no other
metal was capable of executing such work. The art seems to have been
well known in Germany in the Middle Ages, and the process is on the
whole very faithfully described by Agricola in his great work on
Metallurgy.*
[footnote...
AGRICOLA, De Re Metallica. Basle, 1621.
...]
England then produced very little steel, and was mainly dependent for
its supply of the article upon the continental makers.

From an early period Sheffield became distinguished for its
manufacture of iron and steel into various useful articles. We find
it mentioned in the thirteenth century as a place where the best
arrowheads were made,--the Earl of Richmond owing his success at the
battle of Bosworth partly to their superior length, sharpness, and
finish. The manufactures of the town became of a more pacific
character in the following centuries, during which knives, tools, and
implements of husbandry became the leading articles.

Chaucer's reference to the 'Sheffield thwytel' (or case-knife) in his
Canterbury Tales, written about the end of the fourteenth century,
shows that the place had then become known for its manufacture of
knives. In 1575 we find the Earl of Shrewsbury presenting to his
friend Lord Burleigh "a case of Hallamshire whittells, being such
fruites as his pore cuntrey affordeth with fame throughout the
realme." Fuller afterwards speaks of the Sheffield knives as "for
common use of the country people," and he cites an instance of a
knave who cozened him out of fourpence for one when it was only worth
a penny.

In 1600 Sheffield became celebrated for its tobacco-boxes and
Jew's-harps. The town was as yet of small size and population; for
when a survey of it was made in 1615 it was found to contain not more
than 2207 householders, of whom one-third, or 725, were "not able to
live without the charity of their neighbours: these are all Begging
poor."*
[footnote...
The Rev. JOSEPH HUNTER, History of Hallamshire.
...]
It must, however, have continued its manufacture of knives; for we
find that the knife with which Felton stabbed the Duke of Buckingham
at Portsmouth in 1628 was traced to Sheffield. The knife was left
sticking in the duke's body, and when examined was found to bear the
Sheffield corporation mark. It was ultimately ascertained to have
been made by one Wild, a cutler, who had sold the knife for tenpence
to Felton when recruiting in the town. At a still later period, the
manufacture of clasp or spring knives was introduced into Sheffield
by Flemish workmen. Harrison says this trade was begun in 1650. The
clasp-knife was commonly known in the North as a jocteleg. Hence
Burns, describing the famous article treasured by Captain Grose the
antiquarian, says that--

"It was a faulding jocteleq,
Or lang-kail gully;"

the word being merely a corruption of Jacques de Liege, a famous
foreign cutler, whose knives were as well known throughout Europe as
those of Rogers or Mappin are now. Scythes and sickles formed other
branches of manufacture introduced by the Flemish artisans, the
makers of the former principally living in the parish of Norton,
those of the latter in Eckington.

Many improvements were introduced from time to time in the material
of which these articles were made. Instead of importing the German
steel, as it was called, the Sheffield manufacturers began to make it
themselves, principally from Dannemora iron imported from Sweden. The
first English manufacturer of the article was one Crowley, a
Newcastle man; and the Sheffield makers shortly followed his example.
We may here briefly state that the ordinary method of preparing this
valuable material of manufactures is by exposing iron bars, placed in
contact with roughly-granulated charcoal, to an intense heat,--the
process lasting for about a week, more or less, according to the
degree of carbonization required. By this means, what is called
BLISTERED STEEL is produced, and it furnishes the material out of
which razors, files, knives, swords, and various articles of hardware
are manufactured. A further process is the manufacture of the metal
thus treated into SHEAR STEEL, by exposing a fasciculus of the
blistered steel rods, with sand scattered over them for the purposes
of a flux, to the heat of a wind-furnace until the whole mass becomes
of a welding heat, when it is taken from the fire and drawn out under
a forge-hammer,--the process of welding being repeated, after which
the steel is reduced to the required sizes. The article called FAGGOT
steel is made after a somewhat similar process.

But the most valuable form in which steel is now used in the
manufactures of Sheffield is that of cast-steel, in which iron is
presented in perhaps its very highest state of perfection. Cast-steel
consists of iron united to carbon in an elastic state together with a
small portion of oxygen; whereas crude or pig iron consists of iron
combined with carbon in a material state.*
[footnote...
MUSHET, Papers On Iron and Steel.
...]
chief merits of cast-steel consist in its possessing great cohesion
and closeness of grain, with an astonishing degree of tenacity and
flexibility,-- qualities which render it of the highest value in all
kinds of tools and instruments where durability, polish, and fineness
of edge are essential requisites. It is to this material that we are
mainly indebted for the exquisite cutting instrument of the surgeon,
the chisel of the sculptor, the steel plate on which the engraver
practises his art, the cutting tools employed in the various
processes of skilled handicraft, down to the common saw or the axe
used by the backwoodsman in levelling the primeval forest.

The invention of cast-steel is due to Benjamin Huntsman, of
Attercliffe, near Sheffield. M. Le Play, Professor of Metallurgy in
the Royal School of Mines of France, after making careful inquiry and
weighing all the evidence on the subject, arrived at the conclusion
that the invention fairly belongs to Huntsman. The French professor
speaks of it as a "memorable discovery," made and applied with
admirable perseverance; and he claims for its inventor the
distinguished merit of advancing the steel manufactures of Yorkshire
to the first rank, and powerfully contributing to the establishment
on a firm foundation of the industrial and commercial supremacy of
Great Britain. It is remarkable that a French writer should have been
among the first to direct public attention to the merits of this
inventor, and to have first published the few facts known as to his
history in a French Government Report,--showing the neglect which men
of this class have heretofore received at home, and the much greater
esteem in which they are held by scientific foreigners.*
[footnote...
M. Le Play's two elaborate and admirable reports on the manufacture
of steel, published in the Annales des Mines, vols. iii. and ix., 4th
series, are unique of their kind, and have as yet no counterpart in
English literature. They are respectively entitled 'Memoire sur la
Fabrication de l'Acier en Yorkshire,' and 'Memoire sur le
Fabrication et le Commerce des Fers a Acier dans le Nord de
l'Europe.'
...]
Le Play, in his enthusiastic admiration of the discoverer of so
potent a metal as cast-steel, paid a visit to Huntsman's grave in
Atterclifle Churchyard, near Sheffield, and from the inscription on
his tombstone recites the facts of his birth, his death, and his
brief history. With the assistance of his descendants, we are now
enabled to add the following record of the life and labours of this
remarkable but almost forgotten man.

Benjamin Huntsman was born in Lincolnshire in the year 1704. His
parents were of German extraction, and had settled in this country
only a few years previous to his birth. The boy being of an ingenious
turn, was bred to a mechanical calling; and becoming celebrated for
his expertness in repairing clocks, he eventually set up in business
as a clock maker and mender in the town of Doncaster. He also
undertook various other kinds of metal work, such as the making and
repairing of locks, smoke-jacks, roasting-jacks, and other articles
requiring mechanical skill. He was remarkably shrewd, observant,
thoughtful, and practical; so much so that he came to be regarded as
the "wise man" of his neighbourhood, and was not only consulted as to
the repairs of machinery, but also of the human frame. He practised
surgery with dexterity, though after an empirical fashion, and was
held in especial esteem as an oculist. His success was such that his
advice was sought in many surgical diseases, and he was always ready
to give it, but declined receiving any payment in return.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28