Dud Dudley

Dudley Castle

Dud Dudley , also Dudd Dudley , (* 1600 in Dudley Castle , Worcestershire , † October 25, 1684 in St. Helens , Worcestershire) was a British metallurgist and entrepreneur as well as a pioneer of iron smelting with hard coal ( coke ).

Life

He was an illegitimate son of Edward Sutton (Baron Dudley, 1567-1643), who let him study at Oxford (Balliol College) and in 1619 as head of his iron works. The Black Country (northwest Birmingham) in the western Midlands, in which Dudley Castle was, was then a center of iron processing with naturally occurring iron ore. Dudley used the coal from the area to use it instead of charcoal in the blast furnaces. Father and son patented the process in 1622. He built a coke oven with an output of 7 tons per week and the quality of his iron was even confirmed by the king who requested samples. Disputes with competitors who still used charcoal, denied the quality of the iron and hindered its work, and other adversities hindered its success. In 1638 Dudley received a new patent for smelting metals with coal.

In the English Civil War he was an officer on the side of the Royalists, was sentenced to death in London, but escaped and went into hiding as a doctor near Bristol. In the restoration he got his expropriated property back, but could not get a new patent from the king. In 1665 he published a book about his experiences as a metallurgist, Metallum Martis . The book was supposed to attract new investors and he built another blast furnace in Dudley . He later married a second time and possibly lived in Worcester as a doctor.

It was later denied that the coal he used was suitable for coke ovens and that his achievements described in his book were exaggerated. The real breakthrough in coke ovens was found in iron smelting by Abraham Darby I, who was distantly related to him at the beginning of the 18th century. Dudley's process was also used by Clement Clerke († 1693), one of the investors who supported Dudley in the 1670s, and his sons in flame furnaces for smelting lead, copper and iron in the 1680s.

Fonts

• Metallum Martis 1665

literature

• PW King: Dud Dudley's contribution to metallurgy, Historical Metallurgy 36, 2002, pp. 43-53.
• Dudley, Dud, in: Winfried R. Pötsch (lead), Annelore Fischer, Wolfgang Müller: Lexicon of important chemists , Harri Deutsch 1989, ISBN 978-3-817-11055-1 , p. 125.