Abraham Darby I

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Abraham Darby (* 1676 in Dudley , West Midlands , England , † 1717 in Coalbrookdale , Shropshire ; called Abraham Darby I ) was an English iron manufacturer .

life and work

Abraham Darby was the founder of an English industrial dynasty, which in the 17th and 18th centuries decisively developed metallurgy and iron refining in Coalbrookdale (England) over three generations . Coalbrookdale is referred to in many academic papers as the cradle of the industrial revolution.

Abraham Darby I was born into a Quaker family. In 1704 he acquired a metal foundry, from where he further developed the traditional craft.

Abraham Darby's first significant invention was the use of sand mold casting to make iron saucepans. This process, which he had got to know in Bristol in a bronze and brass foundry, was patented for the iron foundry in 1707 . He leased the steelworks in Coalbrookdale in 1709, where he mainly produced iron goods for domestic use using this process.

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Smelting furnace of the ironworks at the Coalbrookdale Museum of Iron

Second, he succeeded in replacing charcoal with hard coal in the smelting of iron ore . In England there was a lack of wood due to the many uses of wood (e.g. in shipbuilding); Hard coal, on the other hand, was available in any quantity. For the use of hard coal, new blast furnaces had to be constructed that met the requirements. Above all, the hard coal had to be coked (refined to coke) in order to reduce the sulfur and phosphorus components. In addition, when coke was smelted, the melting temperature of iron was more likely to be reached. After many attempts, Darby succeeded in constructing a hard coal kiln in which coke was produced in the absence of oxygen. He also succeeded in reducing the high sulfur content in iron, which the use of coke entails, by adding lime.

The spread of the coke oven in England did not begin until 1760; 30 years later, it has completely caught on.

Others

In 1985 David CH Austin bred a rose that was named after the Abraham-Darby-Rose family.

literature

  • Otto Johannsen (on behalf of the Association of German Ironworkers): History of the iron . 3. Edition. Verlag Stahleisen mbH, Düsseldorf 1953, p. 296 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Sigfried Giedion : Space, Time, Architecture . Verlag für Architektur Artemis, Zurich / Munich 1976, ISBN 3-7608-8106-8 , p. 131 .
  2. ↑ Claus Bernet: Anniversaries and memories 2011 . In: Quäker 1/2011, ISSN  1619-0394 , page 3
personal data
SURNAME Darby, Abraham I.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Darby, Abraham
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English iron manufacturer
DATE OF BIRTH 1676
PLACE OF BIRTH Dudley , West Midlands , England
DATE OF DEATH 1717
Place of death Coalbrookdale , Shropshire