Benjamin Chew Tilghman

Benjamin Chew Tilghman (born October 26, 1821 in Philadelphia , † July 3, 1901 there ) was an American inventor . The sandblasting process for cleaning surfaces (patent 1870) and the sulfite process for extracting cellulose from wood come from him.

Tilghman

Tilghman first studied law at the University of Pennsylvania (graduating in 1839) and then went to Europe and especially Paris with his brother until 1861, where he turned to chemistry. He never practiced as a lawyer. In the Civil War he was an officer, was seriously wounded in the Battle of Chancellorsville as a colonel and in command of the 29th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry and then commanded the 3rd US Colored Troops. Most recently, he was brigadier general in 1865. According to legend, he developed the sandblasting process after the war, after seeing window panes that were sanded and blunted during the war. In 1870 he received a patent for it in the USA and Great Britain and in 1875 he was one of the first to receive the Elliott Cresson Medalof the Franklin Institute for this invention. To take advantage of the patent (sharpening files and rasps) he founded a company in London in 1871 and later in Sheffield and Altrincham. He also invested in engineering companies. He also produced small iron balls for cutting stones.

With his brother he developed wood digestion ( cellulose extraction) using the sulfite process and they received patents for it in the USA and Great Britain (1866 to 1869). However, he himself made high losses in the further development of his method and broke it off. From the 1870s the method was further developed to industrial maturity by Carl Daniel Ekman (1845–1904) in Sweden, Karl Kellner and Alexander Mitscherlich in Germany. It was and is in competition with the sulphate process (papermaking) (invented by Carl Ferdinand Dahl ). B. is suitable for spruce, not for resin-rich, cheaper woods such as pine, which can be digested with the sulfate process. He laid the foundations for the sulphite process in Paris when he allowed sulfur dioxide to act on fats in wooden barrels and found that the wooden stoppers became soft and frayed. In 1866 he and his brother made systematic experiments in the Harding & Sons paper mill in Manayunk near Philadelphia. To avoid the destructive effects of sulfuric acid, he took calcium bisulfite.

literature

• Winfried Pötsch u. a. Lexicon of important chemists , Harri Deutsch 1989
• Klaus Beneke: Benjamin Chew Tilghman and on the history of paper and its raw materials, University of Kiel, pdf
• Dipl.-Ing. ETH I. Horowitz: Surface treatment by means of blasting abrasives, Volume I, Vulkan Verlag Essen, 1982