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Abraham Darby is the name of three generations of an English Quaker family that was key to the development of the Industrial Revolution. The first Abraham Darby (b. circa 1678 - d. March 8, 1717) was a Quaker who started his trade at Bristol where he developed the use of moulds for casting iron and brass goods at the Baptist Mills Brass Works . Leaving Bristol in 1709, he became an iron-master with an iron-works at Coalbrookdale in Shropshire.
At the time the normal way of producing iron was the "bloomery method", in which small batches of iron ore were placed in pans, covered with charcoal, and then blown with a bellows. Charcoal was one of the few fuels that could reach the required temperatures to smelt iron, around 1500C, and as the iron industry grew and chopped down entire forests to produce it, it became increasingly expensive. The iron industry as a whole was continually moving to new locations in an effort to maintain access to charcoal production.
After arriving in Coalbrookdale, Darby attempted to develop coke-powered smelting. This had been tried in the past with little success, but Darby's supply of coal was fairly sulphur-free, and to everyone's surprise, worked. Better yet, he found that the coke would burn in piles, whereas charcoal would only burn in thin sheets. By piling the coke and ore into a large container, he could process considerably more ore in the same time. Further developments of this process led to his introduction of the blast furnaceA blast furnace is a type of furnace for smelting whereby the combustion material and ore are supplied with air in the centre of the chamber such that the chemical reaction does not take place only at the surface. Typically this is used for the production in 1709.
The use of the blast furnace dramatically lowered the price of ironmaking, not only because coal was fairly common around the midlands, but also because it allowed for much larger furnaces. Other ironmasters soon followed Darby's lead, but found that the process was not so easy to adapt. It was later learned that Darby's coal supply, from CumbriaCumbria is a county located in the northwest area of England. The boundaries are along the Irish Sea to the west, and along the Pennines to the east. Cumbria's northern boundary stretches from the Solway Firth to Morecambe Bay along the Scotland border., just happened to have a lower than normal sulphur content, which was key to producing quality iron. Ironmasters slowly adapted the blast furance process with the introduction of various types of flux that cleaned out the impurities in the coal, and by the mid-1700s iron production had shot up.
Abraham Darby II ( 1711Events 24 February The London premiere of Rinaldo by George Friderich Handel, the first Italian opera written for the London stage. John Shore invents the tuning fork Alexander Pope publishes An Essay on Criticism Ongoing events Great Northern War ( 1700-- 1763Events February 10 French and Indian War: The 1763 Treaty of Paris ends the war and France cedes Canada to Great Britain. 15 February the Treaty of Hubertusburg puts an end to the Seven Years' War between Prussia and Austria and their allies March 1 Charl) followed in his father's footsteps at the foundry at Coalbrookdale. There, he refined techniques for producing wrought ironWrought iron is a very pure form of commercial iron, having a very small carbon content. It is tough, malleable, ductile and can be easily welded. However, it is too soft to make blades from; steel, with a carbon content between wrought and the high-carbo from pig ironPig iron is raw iron, the immediate product of smelting iron ore with coke and limestone in a blast furnace. Pig iron has a very high carbon content, typically 4-5%, which makes it very brittle and not very useful directly as a material. Pig iron is typic and produced the iron for Thomas NewcomenThomas Newcomen (baptized February 24, 1664- August 5, 1729), blacksmith and inventor though he called himself an 'ironmonger' was born in Dartmouth, Devon, England. In 1712 Newcomen, with his business partner Thomas Savery, built an atmospheric steam eng's steam engineA steam engine is a heat engine that makes use of the potential energy that exists as pressure in steam, converting it to mechanical work. Steam engines were used in pumps, locomotive trains and steam ships, and were essential to the Industrial Revolutions, replacing the more expensive brass cylinders.
Abraham Darby III ( 1750- 1791) carried on the tradition of improving the art of iron-smelting. His most famous achievement was the building of the world's first cast-iron bridge, over the Severn at Ironbridge Gorge near Ironbridge, Shropshire.
