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There is little reason to doubt that this extraordinary development of the iron manufacture has been in a great measure due to the inventions of Henry Cort. It is said that at the present time there are not fewer than 8200 of Cort's furnaces in operation in Great Britain alone.
He not only obtained from Cort plans of the puddling-furnaces and patterns of the rolls, but borrowed Cort's workmen to instruct his own in the necessary operations; and he soon found the method so superior to that invented by Onions that he entirely confined himself to manufacturing after Cort's patent. We also find Mr.
Such being the case, Cort's attention became directed to the subject in connection with the supply of iron to the Navy, and he entered on a series of experiments with the object of improving the manufacture of English iron. What the particular experiments were, and by what steps he arrived at results of so much importance to the British iron trade, no one can now tell.
As might naturally be expected, the principal ironmasters, when they heard of Cort's success, and the rapidity and economy with which he manufactured and forged bar-iron, visited his foundry for the purpose of examining his process, and, if found expedient, of employing it at their own works.
A competent authority has spoken of Cort's grooved rollers as of "high philosophical interest, being scarcely less than the discovery of a new mechanical Power, in reversing the action of the wedge, by the application of force to four surfaces, so as to elongate a mass, instead of applying force to a mass to divide the four surfaces."
As early as 1786, Lord Sheffield recognised the great national importance of Cort's improvements in the following words: "If Mr. It is scarcely necessary here to point out how completely the anticipations of Lord Sheffield have been fulfilled, sanguine though they might appear to be when uttered some seventy-six years ago.
It does not however appear that any patent right was ever levied by the assignees, and the result of the proceeding was that the whole benefit of Cort's inventions was thus made over to the ironmasters and to the public.
Black in 1784, as to the iron produced by Cort's process, said, "Though I cannot perfectly agree with you as to its goodness, yet there is much ingenuity in the idea of forming the bars in that manner, which is the only part of his process which has any pretensions to novelty.... Mr.
Practical men have regarded Cort's improvement of the process of rolling the iron as the most valuable of his inventions.
Extraordinary measures were therefore adopted. The assignments of Cort's patents, which had been made to Jellicoe in consideration of his advances, were taken possession of; but Samuel Jellicoe, the son of the defaulter, singular to say, was put in possession of the properties at Fontley and Gosport, and continued to enjoy them, to Cort's exclusion, for a period of fourteen years.
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